Flight number record

DL 1500

Delta Air Lines · Cleveland to Atlanta

Route: CLE → ATL
Departs: 10:15
Flights: 254
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1500, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1500 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 a little over an hour. That rests on 254 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1500's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 117 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 246 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.76%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

5.3%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 254 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 1500 flies

DL 1500 flies CLE to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:15, used on 66 of 254 flights, with 08:05 (36 flights) next.

Departs 10:1566 flights26.0%
Departs 08:0536 flights14.2%

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 10:15 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 1500 runs 5 points better at 89.0%. 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 1500 next to CLE to ATL

Every carrier on CLE to ATL combined arrived on time 84.6% of the time across 3,398 flights, so DL 1500 is 4 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,680 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 88.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

DL 1500 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1500thin sample	254	89.0%	77 min	2.76%	A
All Delta Air Lines on CLE–ATL	2,680	88.3%	75 min	1.94%	A
All carriers on CLE–ATL	3,398	84.6%	77 min	2.03%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 1500 quarter by quarter

DL 1500 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 94.5% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 80.0%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 64 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 202517 flights—
Oct–Dec 202570 flights89.7%
Jan–Mar 202652 flights80.0%
Apr–Jun 202657 flights94.5%
Jul–Sep 202658 flights91.1%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1500 did best on Thursday at 94.6% on time and worst on Sunday at 82.5%. Each day rests on about 36 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 1500 runs when it is late

DL 1500 often beats the schedule: 118 of 246 completed flights, 48%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 27 late arrivals split 9 under half an hour, 5 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 13 an hour or more.

15+ min early118 flights48.0%
Within 15 min101 flights41.1%
15–29 min late9 flights3.7%
30–59 min late5 flights2.0%
1–2 hours late7 flights2.8%
2+ hours late6 flights2.4%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 246 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

5 of 29 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. Only 3 left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 1500

The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 3 hours 50 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of DL 1500 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
7 December 2025	3 hours 50 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
18 March 2026	3 hours 42 minutes	Carrier
29 November 2025	3 hours 28 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
2 December 2025	2 hours 29 minutes	Carrier
14 November 2025	2 hours 20 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why DL 1500 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 2,090 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
Carrier
35%
Extreme weather
12%
National Airspace System
12%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,090 delay minutes reported on DL 1500.

Cancellations run at 2.76%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.3% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 554 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.

The same number turns up on six other city pairs in the data, including ATL to CLE (163), FLL to BOS (31) and PDX to MSP (20), but none flew often enough under DL 1500 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to CLE to ATL only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 254 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 1500

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 1500: 2.76% of its 254 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

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