Flight number record
DL 1281
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Key West
- Route
- ATL → EYW
- Departs
- 08:55
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1281, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1281 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1281's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 131 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.92%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
4.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.
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Schedule
When DL 1281 flies
DL 1281 flies ATL to EYW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:55, used on 139 of 365 flights, with 09:05 (59 flights) and 09:35 (57 flights) next.
- Departs 08:55139 flights38.1%
- Departs 09:0559 flights16.2%
- Departs 09:3557 flights15.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 08:55 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 1281 runs 7 points better at 90.4%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
DL 1281 next to ATL to EYW
Every carrier on ATL to EYW combined arrived on time 83.0% of the time across 1,460 flights, so DL 1281 is 7 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 9 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1281 | 365 | 90.4% | 74 min | 1.92% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–EYW | 1,460 | 83.0% | 72 min | 1.58% | B |
| All carriers on ATL–EYW | 1,460 | 83.0% | 72 min | 1.58% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1281 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1281 held fairly steady: 86.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 88.2% in Jan–Mar 2026, 93.3% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 93.4% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights86.7%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights88.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights93.3%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights93.4%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1281 did best on Wednesday at 98.1% on time and worst on Saturday at 83.7%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1281 runs when it is late
DL 1281 often beats the schedule: 118 of 354 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 34 late arrivals split 11 under half an hour, 7 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 16 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early118 flights33.3%
- Within 15 min202 flights57.1%
- 15–29 min late11 flights3.1%
- 30–59 min late7 flights2.0%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights2.5%
- 2+ hours late7 flights2.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 354 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
6 of 31 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1281
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 October 2025, 4 hours 59 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across October, March, November, June and September, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 October 2025 | 4 hours 59 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 16 March 2026 | 3 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 November 2025 | 3 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 June 2026 | 2 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 September 2025 | 2 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1281 runs late
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 2,522 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,522 delay minutes reported on DL 1281.
Cancellations sit at 1.92% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.10%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 646 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.
DL 1281 is not only a ATL to EYW flight. It also flew EYW to ATL (365 flights, 87.9% 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. 365 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EYW to ATL | 365 | 87.9% | 122 min | 2.47% | A |
What to do with this
Booking DL 1281
For a booking, read DL 1281 as 90.4% on time with 1.92% cancelled over 365 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to EYW, every carrier and departure
- EYW to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2815 on the same route77.2%
- Delta Air Lines 1472 on the same route87.0%
- Delta Air Lines 2168 on the same route78.0%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.