Flight number record
DL 1287
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Houston
- Route
- LAX → IAH
- Departs
- 18:40
- Flights
- 283
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1287, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1287 lands a B, 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 283 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1287's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 66 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 279 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.41%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
6.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 283 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 1287 flies
DL 1287 flies LAX to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:40, used on 72 of 283 flights, with 18:30 (70 flights) and 18:35 (45 flights) next.
- Departs 18:4072 flights25.4%
- Departs 18:3070 flights24.7%
- Departs 18:3545 flights15.9%
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 18:40 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 1287 runs 16 points better at 83.9%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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 1287 next to LAX to IAH
Every carrier on LAX to IAH combined arrived on time 84.6% of the time across 5,143 flights, so DL 1287 is about level with it. Delta flew 648 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.8% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 3 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1287thin sample | 283 | 83.9% | 69 min | 1.41% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on LAX–IAH | 648 | 84.8% | 70 min | 0.93% | B+ |
| All carriers on LAX–IAH | 5,143 | 84.6% | 61 min | 0.47% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1287 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1287 held fairly steady: 83.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 79.7% in Jan–Mar 2026, 86.5% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 81.6% 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 202521 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202569 flights83.3%
- Jan–Mar 202670 flights79.7%
- Apr–Jun 202674 flights86.5%
- Jul–Sep 202649 flights81.6%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1287 did best on Wednesday at 93.0% on time and worst on Friday at 72.9%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1287 runs when it is late
DL 1287 often beats the schedule: 87 of 279 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 45 late arrivals split 16 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 17 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early87 flights31.2%
- Within 15 min147 flights52.7%
- 15–29 min late16 flights5.7%
- 30–59 min late12 flights4.3%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights3.6%
- 2+ hours late7 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 279 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 53 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. Only 5 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1287
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 January 2026, 4 hours 30 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 January 2026 | 4 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 May 2026 | 4 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 June 2026 | 2 hours 55 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 March 2026 | 2 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 March 2026 | 2 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1287 runs late
Carrier accounts for 52% of the 3,083 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,083 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 to one. The split is drawn from 3,083 delay minutes reported on DL 1287.
Cancellations sit at 1.41% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
6.1% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,379 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.
Every one of the 283 flights under DL 1287 in the data flew LAX to IAH. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 283 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 1287
For a booking, read DL 1287 as 83.9% on time with 1.41% cancelled over 283 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to LAX, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1143 on the same route85.6%
- United Airlines 2377 on the same route85.9%
- United Airlines 1416 on the same route91.8%
- Frontier Airlines 1756 on the same route70.2%
- United Airlines 491 on the same route90.5%
- United Airlines 2086 on the same route85.8%
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.