Flight number record
DL 1296
Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to San Diego
- Route
- SLC → SAN
- Departs
- 11:10
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1296, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1296 lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
81.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights
Avg delay
46 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 1296 flies
DL 1296 flies SLC to SAN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:10, used on 80 of 365 flights, with 11:20 (79 flights) and 11:15 (64 flights) next.
- Departs 11:1080 flights21.9%
- Departs 11:2079 flights21.6%
- Departs 11:1564 flights17.5%
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 11:10 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and DL 1296 runs 3 points better at 81.0%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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 1296 next to SLC to SAN
Every carrier on SLC to SAN combined arrived on time 80.9% of the time across 3,097 flights, so DL 1296 is about level with it. Delta flew 1,738 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1296 | 365 | 81.0% | 46 min | 1.64% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on SLC–SAN | 1,738 | 82.2% | 54 min | 0.92% | B+ |
| All carriers on SLC–SAN | 3,097 | 80.9% | 54 min | 0.90% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1296 quarter by quarter
DL 1296 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 86.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 65.6%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 91 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights77.2%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights86.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights85.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights65.6%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1296 did best on Tuesday at 86.5% on time and worst on Friday at 66.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1296 runs when it is late
Most of the lateness is short. 38 of the 68 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 11 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early64 flights17.9%
- Within 15 min226 flights63.1%
- 15–29 min late38 flights10.6%
- 30–59 min late19 flights5.3%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late5 flights1.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 358 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
14 of 62 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. In the other direction, 20 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SAN.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1296
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 November 2025, 4 hours 36 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across November, January, June and December, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 November 2025 | 4 hours 36 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 1 January 2026 | 3 hours 44 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 June 2026 | 3 hours 42 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 28 December 2025 | 2 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 December 2025 | 2 hours 23 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 1296 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 50% of the 3,145 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%National Airspace System
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
50% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,565 minutes out of 3,145, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,145 delay minutes reported on DL 1296.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.1% 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 626 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 one other city pair in the data, including SAN to SLC (186), but none flew often enough under DL 1296 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SLC to SAN only.
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.
What to do with this
Booking DL 1296
For a booking, read DL 1296 as 81.0% on time with 1.64% cancelled over 365 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to SAN, every carrier and departure
- SAN to SLC, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1202 on the same route81.9%
- Delta Air Lines 1177 on the same route92.8%
- Delta Air Lines 1210 on the same route74.8%
- SkyWest Airlines 3018 on the same route92.0%
- Delta Air Lines 1252 on the same route79.9%
- SkyWest Airlines 3019 on the same route75.2%
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- San Diego International (SAN) 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.