Flight number record

DL 1490

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Nashville

Route: ATL → BNA
Departs: 21:17
Flights: 271
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1490, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1490 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 271 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

On time

74.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 263 completed flights

Avg delay

48 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.21%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 271 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 1490 flies

DL 1490 flies ATL to BNA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:17, used on 35 of 271 flights, with 18:59 (31 flights) and 21:35 (29 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:1735 flights12.9%
Departs 18:5931 flights11.4%
Departs 21:3529 flights10.7%

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 21:17 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 1490 runs 4 points better at 74.9%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 1490 next to ATL to BNA

Every carrier on ATL to BNA combined arrived on time 81.4% of the time across 4,242 flights, so DL 1490 is 7 points behind it. Delta flew 3,361 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 7 points.

DL 1490 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1490thin sample	271	74.9%	48 min	2.21%	C
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–BNA	3,361	82.0%	56 min	1.90%	B
All carriers on ATL–BNA	4,242	81.4%	58 min	1.60%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1490 quarter by quarter

DL 1490 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 81.4% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 68.0%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 68 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 202587 flights81.4%
Oct–Dec 202560 flights75.9%
Jan–Mar 202648 flights72.7%
Apr–Jun 202676 flights68.0%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1490 ranged from 71.7% on Thursday to 77.8% on Monday. With about 39 flights behind each day, a spread of 6 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 1490 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 3,137 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
40%
National Airspace System
31%
Late-arriving aircraft
23%
Extreme weather
5%

The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 1,255 of the 3,137 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,137 delay minutes reported on DL 1490.

Cancellations sit at 2.21% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.74%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

6.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including BNA to ATL (63) and PIT to ATL (6), but none flew often enough under DL 1490 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to BNA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 271 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 1490

For a booking, DL 1490 is one of the weaker ways to fly ATL to BNA: 7 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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