Flight number record
DL 1398
Delta Air Lines · Boston to New Orleans
- Route
- BOS → MSY
- Departs
- 11:20
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1398, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1398 lands a B, 5 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 364 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1398's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 52 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.20%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
4.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Schedule
When DL 1398 flies
DL 1398 flies BOS to MSY without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:20, used on 130 of 364 flights, with 11:10 (76 flights) and 11:07 (46 flights) next.
- Departs 11:20130 flights35.7%
- Departs 11:1076 flights20.9%
- Departs 11:0746 flights12.6%
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 11:20 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and DL 1398 runs 4 points better at 82.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
DL 1398 next to BOS to MSY
Every carrier on BOS to MSY combined arrived on time 76.4% of the time across 863 flights, so DL 1398 is 6 points ahead of it. 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 1398thin sample | 364 | 82.5% | 71 min | 2.20% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on BOS–MSY | 374 | 82.7% | 70 min | 2.14% | B |
| All carriers on BOS–MSY | 863 | 76.4% | 76 min | 1.85% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1398 quarter by quarter
DL 1398 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 86.8% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 73.8%, a swing of 13 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 202591 flights82.0%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights81.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights73.8%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1398 ranged from 77.6% on Tuesday to 86.3% on Monday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1398 runs when it is late
DL 1398 often beats the schedule: 114 of 354 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 62 late arrivals split 27 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 17 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early114 flights32.2%
- Within 15 min178 flights50.3%
- 15–29 min late27 flights7.6%
- 30–59 min late18 flights5.1%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.4%
- 2+ hours late12 flights3.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 354 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
14 of 50 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. In the other direction, 26 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 MSY.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1398
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 April 2026, 7 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 April 2026 | 7 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 July 2026 | 5 hours 43 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 August 2026 | 5 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 September 2025 | 3 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 March 2026 | 3 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 1398 runs late
Carrier accounts for 52% of the 4,374 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,264 of the 4,374 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,374 delay minutes reported on DL 1398.
Cancellations sit at 2.20% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% 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 1,367 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 MSY to BOS (133), but none flew often enough under DL 1398 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to BOS to MSY only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 1398
For a booking, read DL 1398 as 82.5% on time with 2.20% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- BOS to MSY, every carrier and departure
- MSY to BOS, the return direction
- JetBlue Airways 401 on the same route74.3%
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) 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.