Flight number record

DL 1517

Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Kansas City

Route: LAX → MCI
Departs: 09:30
Flights: 341
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 341 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 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 156 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

93.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 336 completed flights

Avg delay

98 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.17%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 341 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

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 112 of 341 flights, with 09:35 (56 flights) and 09:45 (49 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 09:30112 flights32.8%
Departs 09:3556 flights16.4%
Departs 09:4549 flights14.4%

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 09:30 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 1517 runs 9 points better at 93.2%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 1517 next to LAX to MCI

Every carrier on LAX to MCI combined arrived on time 83.7% of the time across 1,288 flights, so DL 1517 is 10 points ahead of it. Delta flew 619 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 88.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 12 points.

DL 1517 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1517thin sample	341	93.2%	98 min	1.17%	A
All Delta Air Lines on LAX–MCI	619	88.5%	76 min	0.97%	A+
All carriers on LAX–MCI	1,288	83.7%	61 min	0.93%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1517 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1517 held fairly steady: 94.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 89.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 92.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 96.4% in Apr–Jun 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 202577 flights94.6%
Oct–Dec 202589 flights89.9%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights92.2%
Apr–Jun 202685 flights96.4%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1517 ranged from 89.1% on Friday to 98.0% on Sunday. With about 49 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 1517 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 76% of the 2,264 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.

Carrier
76%
Late-arriving aircraft
14%
National Airspace System
10%

The largest share of delay minutes, 76%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,721 of the 2,264 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,264 delay minutes reported on DL 1517.

Cancellations sit at 1.17% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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. 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 1517 is not only a LAX to MCI flight. It also flew MCI to LAX (334 flights, 90.9% 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. 341 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 1517
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
MCI to LAXthin sample	334	90.9%	82 min	0.90%	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: 93.2% on time and 1.17% 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