Flight number record

DL 1481

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Louisville

Route: ATL → SDF
Departs: 10:25
Flights: 358
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 40 minutes. That rests on 358 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1481's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 112 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 349 completed flights

Avg delay

38 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.23%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

0.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 358 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 1481 flies

DL 1481 flies ATL to SDF without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:25, used on 87 of 358 flights, with 10:35 (38 flights) and 10:15 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:2587 flights24.3%
Departs 10:3538 flights10.6%
Departs 10:1536 flights10.1%

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 10:25 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, 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.

Against the route

DL 1481 next to ATL to SDF

Every carrier on ATL to SDF combined arrived on time 84.9% of the time across 2,707 flights, so DL 1481 is 4 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,705 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 7 points.

DL 1481 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1481thin sample	358	88.8%	38 min	2.23%	A
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–SDF	2,705	84.9%	64 min	1.52%	B
All carriers on ATL–SDF	2,707	84.9%	64 min	1.51%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1481 quarter by quarter

DL 1481 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.5% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 83.1%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 90 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 202592 flights93.5%
Oct–Dec 202587 flights89.3%
Jan–Mar 202688 flights83.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights88.9%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1481 did best on Thursday at 94.0% on time and worst on Monday at 81.6%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1481 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 66% of the 1,476 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
66%
Late-arriving aircraft
19%
National Airspace System
9%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, 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 981 of the 1,476 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,476 delay minutes reported on DL 1481.

Cancellations sit at 2.23% against a national 1.81%, 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 8.1% 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.

DL 1481 is not only a ATL to SDF flight. It also flew SDF to ATL (358 flights, 90.9% 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.

Other routes flown as DL 1481
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SDF to ATLthin sample	358	90.9%	69 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.

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