Flight number record

DL 1491

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Austin

Route: ATL → AUS
Departs: 15:50
Flights: 347
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 347 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

On time

74.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.86%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

8.4%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 347 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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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 98 of 347 flights, with 15:47 (55 flights) and 15:51 (53 flights) next.

Departs 15:5098 flights28.2%
Departs 15:4755 flights15.9%
Departs 15:5153 flights15.3%

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 15:50 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and DL 1491 runs 3 points better at 74.7%. 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 1491 next to ATL to AUS

Every carrier on ATL to AUS combined arrived on time 81.0% of the time across 4,497 flights, so DL 1491 is 6 points behind it. Delta flew 3,163 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 6 points.

DL 1491 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1491thin sample	347	74.7%	59 min	0.86%	C+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–AUS	3,163	81.9%	58 min	1.49%	B
All carriers on ATL–AUS	4,497	81.0%	59 min	1.27%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 1491 quarter by quarter

DL 1491 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 57.6%, a swing of 32 points on roughly 69 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 flights90.0%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights80.9%
Jan–Mar 202684 flights83.1%
Apr–Jun 202684 flights66.3%
Jul–Sep 202659 flights57.6%

Scale runs 50% to 95%.

By weekday, DL 1491 did best on Saturday at 85.7% on time and worst on Sunday at 67.3%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 1491 runs when it is late

DL 1491 often beats the schedule: 108 of 344 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 87 late arrivals split 28 under half an hour, 30 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 29 an hour or more.

15+ min early108 flights31.4%
Within 15 min149 flights43.3%
15–29 min late28 flights8.1%
30–59 min late30 flights8.7%
1–2 hours late23 flights6.7%
2+ hours late6 flights1.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 344 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 101 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 34 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 20 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 AUS.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 1491

The latest arrival of the period was on 12 July 2026, 4 hours 44 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in July 2026.

The latest arrivals of DL 1491 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
12 July 2026	4 hours 44 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
14 June 2026	4 hours 31 minutes	Carrier
11 July 2026	3 hours 55 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
11 August 2026	3 hours 6 minutes	National Airspace System
27 July 2026	2 hours 55 minutes	Carrier

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 5,086 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
33%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Carrier
31%
Extreme weather
4%

33% 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 1,674 minutes out of 5,086, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,086 delay minutes reported on DL 1491.

Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, below the national 1.89% 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 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, 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.

DL 1491 is not only a ATL to AUS flight. It also flew AUS to ATL (284 flights, 75.1% 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. 347 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 1491
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AUS to ATLthin sample	284	75.1%	80 min	1.06%	B

What to do with this

Booking DL 1491

For a booking, DL 1491 is one of the weaker ways to fly ATL to AUS: 6 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures