Flight number record

DL 1287

Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Houston

Route: LAX → IAH
Departs: 18:40
Flights: 280
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1287, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1287 earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 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 280 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1287's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 275 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.79%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 280 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 1287 flies

DL 1287 flies LAX to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:40, used on 70 of 280 flights, with 18:30 (46 flights) and 18:10 (40 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:4070 flights25.0%
Departs 18:3046 flights16.4%
Departs 18:1040 flights14.3%

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 18:40 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 1287 runs 17 points better at 84.7%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

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 5,255 flights, so DL 1287 is about level with it. Delta flew 645 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 86.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 3 points.

DL 1287 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1287thin sample	280	84.7%	72 min	1.79%	B
All Delta Air Lines on LAX–IAH	645	86.1%	73 min	1.09%	A
All carriers on LAX–IAH	5,255	84.6%	64 min	0.59%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1287 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1287 held fairly steady: 89.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 83.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 79.7% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 86.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202567 flights89.4%
Oct–Dec 202569 flights83.3%
Jan–Mar 202670 flights79.7%
Apr–Jun 202674 flights86.5%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1287 did best on Thursday at 91.3% on time and worst on Friday at 74.5%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1287 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 3,032 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
54%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
National Airspace System
10%

36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 3,032 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 3,032 delay minutes reported on DL 1287.

Cancellations sit at 1.79% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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. 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.

Every one of the 280 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. 280 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 84.7% on time with 1.79% cancelled over 280 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