Flight number record

DL 1297

Delta Air Lines · Boston to Austin

Route: BOS → AUS
Departs: 13:30
Flights: 255
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1297, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1297 sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 255 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

On time

75.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 251 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.18%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

10.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 255 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When DL 1297 flies

DL 1297 flies BOS to AUS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 13:30, used on 70 of 255 flights, with 13:25 (43 flights) and 13:10 (31 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 13:3070 flights27.5%
Departs 13:2543 flights16.9%
Departs 13:1031 flights12.2%

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 13:30 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and DL 1297 runs 3 points worse at 75.7%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 1297 next to BOS to AUS

Every carrier on BOS to AUS combined arrived on time 72.2% of the time across 1,634 flights, so DL 1297 is 4 points ahead of it. Delta flew 988 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 6 points.

DL 1297 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1297thin sample	255	75.7%	74 min	1.18%	B
All Delta Air Lines on BOS–AUS	988	74.9%	93 min	2.63%	C
All carriers on BOS–AUS	1,634	72.2%	77 min	1.96%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1297 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1297 held fairly steady: 76.1% in Jul–Sep 2025, 76.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 76.3% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 74.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 3 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202568 flights76.1%
Oct–Dec 202573 flights76.7%
Jan–Mar 202641 flights76.3%
Apr–Jun 202673 flights74.0%

Scale runs 65% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1297 did best on Monday at 81.8% on time and worst on Thursday at 66.7%. Each day rests on about 36 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1297 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 4,492 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
56%
National Airspace System
23%
Carrier
20%
Extreme weather
1%

56% 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 4,492 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 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 4,492 delay minutes reported on DL 1297.

Cancellations sit at 1.18% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.39%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 1,698 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The same number turns up on four other city pairs in the data, including AUS to BOS (73), ATL to MYR (15) and MSY to SLC (6), but none flew often enough under DL 1297 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to BOS to AUS 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 1297

For a booking, read DL 1297 as 75.7% on time with 1.18% cancelled over 255 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