Flight number record
DL 1481
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Louisville
- Route
- ATL → SDF
- Departs
- 10:30
- Flights
- 358
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1481, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1481 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 35 minutes. That rests on 358 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1481's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 115 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 349 completed flights
Avg delay
36 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.23%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
0.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 358 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 1481 flies
DL 1481 flies ATL to SDF without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:30, used on 53 of 358 flights, with 10:35 (38 flights) and 10:15 (36 flights) next.
- Departs 10:3053 flights14.8%
- Departs 10:3538 flights10.6%
- Departs 10:1536 flights10.1%
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 10:30 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 1481 runs 5 points better at 88.8%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
DL 1481 next to ATL to SDF
Every carrier on ATL to SDF combined arrived on time 84.3% of the time across 2,710 flights, so DL 1481 is 5 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1481thin sample | 358 | 88.8% | 36 min | 2.23% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–SDF | 2,710 | 84.3% | 64 min | 1.48% | B |
| All carriers on ATL–SDF | 2,710 | 84.3% | 64 min | 1.48% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1481 quarter by quarter
DL 1481 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 93.5% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 83.1%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 72 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 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202587 flights89.3%
- Jan–Mar 202688 flights83.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights88.9%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights93.5%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 1481 ranged from 83.7% on Sunday to 93.9% on Saturday. With about 51 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1481 runs when it is late
DL 1481 often beats the schedule: 103 of 349 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 39 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 3 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early103 flights29.5%
- Within 15 min207 flights59.3%
- 15–29 min late18 flights5.2%
- 30–59 min late18 flights5.2%
- 1–2 hours late2 flights0.6%
- 2+ hours late1 flights0.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 349 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
10 of 46 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. Only 3 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1481
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 December 2025, 2 hours 4 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 29 December 2025 | 2 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 June 2026 | 1 hour 53 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 November 2025 | 1 hour 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 November 2025 | 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 March 2026 | 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 1481 runs late
Carrier accounts for 67% of the 1,414 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 67%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 67%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 945 of the 1,414 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,414 delay minutes reported on DL 1481.
Cancellations sit at 2.23% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 0.9% 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.
DL 1481 is not only a ATL to SDF flight. It also flew SDF to ATL (358 flights, 89.4% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 358 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SDF to ATLthin sample | 358 | 89.4% | 70 min | 1.96% | A |
What to do with this
Booking DL 1481
For a booking, read DL 1481 as 88.8% on time with 2.23% cancelled over 358 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to SDF, every carrier and departure
- SDF to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2624 on the same route83.3%
- Delta Air Lines 1374 on the same route89.2%
- Delta Air Lines 3093 on the same route77.8%
- Delta Air Lines 1126 on the same route78.0%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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.