Flight number record

DL 1338

Delta Air Lines · Norfolk to Atlanta

Route: ORF → ATL
Departs: 08:00
Flights: 267
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1338, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1338 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 267 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1338's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 126 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 264 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.12%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 267 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 1338 flies

DL 1338 flies ORF to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:00, used on 86 of 267 flights, with 08:30 (39 flights) and 08:01 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:0086 flights32.2%
Departs 08:3039 flights14.6%
Departs 08:0135 flights13.1%

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 08:00 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 1338 runs 6 points better at 90.2%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 1338 next to ORF to ATL

Every carrier on ORF to ATL combined arrived on time 85.6% of the time across 2,919 flights, so DL 1338 is 5 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,701 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 86.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 9 points.

DL 1338 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1338thin sample	267	90.2%	81 min	1.12%	A
All Delta Air Lines on ORF–ATL	2,701	86.2%	85 min	1.55%	A
All carriers on ORF–ATL	2,919	85.6%	86 min	1.54%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1338 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1338 held fairly steady: 94.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 88.0% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 87.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights94.5%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights88.0%
Jan–Mar 20264 flights—
Apr–Jun 202679 flights87.0%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1338 did best on Thursday at 100.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 81.6%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1338 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 74% of the 2,112 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
74%
National Airspace System
26%

The largest share of delay minutes, 74%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,560 of the 2,112 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,112 delay minutes reported on DL 1338.

Cancellations sit at 1.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 516 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.

The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including TPA to DTW (62) and SAT to LAX (31), but none flew often enough under DL 1338 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORF to ATL only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 267 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 1338

For a booking, DL 1338 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 90.2% on time and 1.12% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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