Flight number record

DL 1516

Delta Air Lines · Cincinnati to Atlanta

Route: CVG → ATL
Departs: 18:04
Flights: 258
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1516, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1516 earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 258 flights, with a median arrival 18 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1516's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 83 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 256 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.39%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 258 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 18 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 1516 flies

DL 1516 flies CVG to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:04, used on 49 of 258 flights, with 18:46 (30 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:0449 flights19.0%
Departs 18:4630 flights11.6%

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 18:04 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 1516 runs 18 points better at 85.9%. 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 1516 next to CVG to ATL

Every carrier on CVG to ATL combined arrived on time 86.4% of the time across 3,017 flights, so DL 1516 is about level with it. Delta flew 2,729 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 87.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 4 points.

DL 1516 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1516thin sample	258	85.9%	82 min	0.39%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on CVG–ATL	2,729	87.3%	73 min	1.21%	A
All carriers on CVG–ATL	3,017	86.4%	75 min	1.23%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1516 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1516 held fairly steady: 81.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 85.2% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 89.3% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202590 flights81.8%
Oct–Dec 202588 flights85.2%
Jan–Mar 202656 flights89.3%
Apr–Jun 202624 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1516 did best on Wednesday at 94.6% on time and worst on Sunday at 77.8%. Each day rests on about 37 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1516 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 2,955 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
48%
National Airspace System
34%
Carrier
13%
Extreme weather
4%

48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 2,955 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 2,955 delay minutes reported on DL 1516.

Cancellations are rare at 0.39%, 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

6.2% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The same number turns up on four other city pairs in the data, including ATL to CVG (199), ORD to ATL (31) and CAE to ATL (2), but none flew often enough under DL 1516 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to CVG to ATL only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 258 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 1516

For a booking, DL 1516 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.9% on time and 0.39% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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