Flight number record

DL 1279

Delta Air Lines · Raleigh to Tampa

Route: RDU → TPA
Departs: 06:30
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1279, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1279 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1279's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 132 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights

Avg delay

75 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.92%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When DL 1279 flies

DL 1279 flies RDU to TPA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:30, used on 131 of 364 flights, with 06:50 (80 flights) and 06:15 (72 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:30131 flights36.0%
Departs 06:5080 flights22.0%
Departs 06:1572 flights19.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 06:30 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 1279 runs level with that at 90.8%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 1279 next to RDU to TPA

Every carrier on RDU to TPA combined arrived on time 80.7% of the time across 1,280 flights, so DL 1279 is 10 points ahead of it. Delta flew 649 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 9 points.

DL 1279 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1279thin sample	364	90.8%	75 min	1.92%	A
All Delta Air Lines on RDU–TPA	649	84.3%	79 min	1.85%	B
All carriers on RDU–TPA	1,280	80.7%	70 min	1.95%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1279 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1279 held fairly steady: 90.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 92.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 87.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 93.4% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights90.0%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights92.0%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights87.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights93.4%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1279 ranged from 84.3% on Saturday to 96.2% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 12 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 1279 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 86% of the 2,460 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
86%
National Airspace System
8%
Late-arriving aircraft
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 86%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,118 of the 2,460 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,460 delay minutes reported on DL 1279.

Cancellations sit at 1.92% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 587 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

DL 1279 is not only a RDU to TPA flight. It also flew TPA to RDU (290 flights, 89.9% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

Other routes flown as DL 1279
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
TPA to RDUthin sample	290	89.9%	102 min	1.38%	A

What to do with this

Booking DL 1279

For a booking, read DL 1279 as 90.8% on time with 1.92% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

A flight number here means Delta Air Lines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures