Flight number record
DL 1285
Delta Air Lines · Chicago to Atlanta
- Route
- MDW → ATL
- Departs
- 06:00
- Flights
- 255
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1285, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1285 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 about 2.9 hours. That rests on 255 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1285's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 134 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 248 completed flights
Avg delay
171 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.35%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
5.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 255 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 15 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Schedule
When DL 1285 flies
DL 1285 flies MDW to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 177 of 255 flights, with 06:23 (31 flights) next.
- Departs 06:00177 flights69.4%
- Departs 06:2331 flights12.2%
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 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 1285 runs level with that at 90.7%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
DL 1285 next to MDW to ATL
Every carrier on MDW to ATL combined arrived on time 78.7% of the time across 3,538 flights, so DL 1285 is 12 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,359 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 87.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 10 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1285thin sample | 255 | 90.7% | 171 min | 2.35% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on MDW–ATL | 1,359 | 87.0% | 95 min | 2.72% | A |
| All carriers on MDW–ATL | 3,538 | 78.7% | 64 min | 2.01% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1285 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1285 held fairly steady: 88.2% in Jan–Mar 2026, 91.0% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 93.5% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Oct–Dec 202512 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights88.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights91.0%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights93.5%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1285 ranged from 85.7% on Sunday to 97.2% on Thursday. With about 36 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.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1285 runs when it is late
DL 1285 often beats the schedule: 127 of 248 completed flights, 51%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When DL 1285 is late it tends to be very late: 14 of its 23 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 10 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early127 flights51.2%
- Within 15 min98 flights39.5%
- 15–29 min late4 flights1.6%
- 30–59 min late5 flights2.0%
- 1–2 hours late4 flights1.6%
- 2+ hours late10 flights4.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 248 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 21 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 2 made it up before arrival. Only 4 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1285
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 May 2026, 14 hours 12 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 May 2026 | 14 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 July 2026 | 8 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 6 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 March 2026 | 6 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 June 2026 | 4 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1285 runs late
Carrier accounts for 91% of the 3,933 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 91%Carrier
- 5%National Airspace System
- 4%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 91%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,569 of the 3,933 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,933 delay minutes reported on DL 1285.
Cancellations sit at 2.35% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.39%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
5.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 2.9 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 591 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.
The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including FLL to ATL (41) and LAX to SMF (34), but none flew often enough under DL 1285 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to MDW to ATL only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 255 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.
What to do with this
Booking DL 1285
For a booking, read DL 1285 as 90.7% on time with 2.35% cancelled over 255 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- MDW to ATL, every carrier and departure
- ATL to MDW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1063 on the same route88.1%
- Frontier Airlines 2292 on the same route69.6%
- Delta Air Lines 2417 on the same route84.5%
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- 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.