Flight number record
DL 1517
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Kansas City
- Route
- LAX → MCI
- Departs
- 09:30
- Flights
- 338
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1517, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1517 earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 338 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1517's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 158 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 335 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.59%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 338 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 1517 flies
DL 1517 flies LAX to MCI without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:30, used on 85 of 338 flights, with 09:35 (80 flights) and 09:45 (49 flights) next.
- Departs 09:3085 flights25.1%
- Departs 09:3580 flights23.7%
- Departs 09:4549 flights14.5%
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 09:30 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 1517 runs 9 points better at 93.1%. 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 1517 next to LAX to MCI
Every carrier on LAX to MCI combined arrived on time 82.3% of the time across 1,349 flights, so DL 1517 is 11 points ahead of it. Delta flew 616 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 89.7% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 12 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1517thin sample | 338 | 93.1% | 97 min | 0.59% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on LAX–MCI | 616 | 89.7% | 78 min | 0.49% | A+ |
| All carriers on LAX–MCI | 1,349 | 82.3% | 60 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1517 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1517 held fairly steady: 89.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 92.2% in Jan–Mar 2026, 96.4% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 91.8% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202525 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights89.9%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights92.2%
- Apr–Jun 202685 flights96.4%
- Jul–Sep 202649 flights91.8%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1517 ranged from 89.4% on Friday to 97.4% on Saturday. With about 48 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1517 runs when it is late
DL 1517 often beats the schedule: 136 of 335 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 12 of the 23 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 9 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early136 flights40.6%
- Within 15 min176 flights52.5%
- 15–29 min late12 flights3.6%
- 30–59 min late2 flights0.6%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights0.9%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 335 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 30 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 11 still arrived on time. Only 4 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1517
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 December 2025, 6 hours 34 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 December 2025 | 6 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 March 2026 | 6 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 January 2026 | 4 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 March 2026 | 4 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 July 2026 | 2 hours 55 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1517 runs late
Carrier accounts for 75% of the 2,236 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 75%Carrier
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 75%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,678 of the 2,236 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,236 delay minutes reported on DL 1517.
Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,363 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 1517 is not only a LAX to MCI flight. It also flew MCI to LAX (331 flights, 90.6% 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. 338 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCI to LAXthin sample | 331 | 90.6% | 87 min | 0.30% | A+ |
What to do with this
Booking DL 1517
For a booking, DL 1517 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 93.1% on time and 0.59% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to MCI, every carrier and departure
- MCI to LAX, the return direction
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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 ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.