Flight number record
DL 1491
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Austin
- Route
- ATL → AUS
- Departs
- 15:50
- Flights
- 350
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1491, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1491 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 350 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
74.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 347 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.86%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
8.4%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 350 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When DL 1491 flies
DL 1491 flies ATL to AUS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:50, used on 106 of 350 flights, with 15:47 (55 flights) and 15:51 (53 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 15:50106 flights30.3%
- Departs 15:4755 flights15.7%
- Departs 15:5153 flights15.1%
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 15:50 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 1491 runs 2 points better at 74.4%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
DL 1491 next to ATL to AUS
Every carrier on ATL to AUS combined arrived on time 79.8% of the time across 4,545 flights, so DL 1491 is 5 points behind it. Delta flew 3,233 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1491thin sample | 350 | 74.4% | 52 min | 0.86% | C+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–AUS | 3,233 | 80.2% | 57 min | 1.48% | B |
| All carriers on ATL–AUS | 4,545 | 79.8% | 58 min | 1.39% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 1491 quarter by quarter
DL 1491 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 83.1% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 66.3%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 88 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 flights67.4%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights80.9%
- Jan–Mar 202684 flights83.1%
- Apr–Jun 202684 flights66.3%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1491 did best on Saturday at 83.3% on time and worst on Thursday at 66.7%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 1491 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 4,628 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,756 minutes out of 4,628, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,628 delay minutes reported on DL 1491.
Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
8.4% 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 813 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.
DL 1491 is not only a ATL to AUS flight. It also flew AUS to ATL (305 flights, 74.8% 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. 350 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AUS to ATLthin sample | 305 | 74.8% | 77 min | 0.98% | C+ |
What to do with this
Booking DL 1491
For a booking, DL 1491 is one of the weaker ways to fly ATL to AUS: 5 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.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to AUS, every carrier and departure
- AUS to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2976 on the same route93.2%
- Delta Air Lines 2886 on the same route86.9%
- Delta Air Lines 1397 on the same route77.5%
- Delta Air Lines 2104 on the same route84.2%
- Delta Air Lines 1170 on the same route70.9%
- Delta Air Lines 1060 on the same route73.4%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) 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
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.