Flight number record

DL 1518

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Raleigh

Route: ATL → RDU
Departs: 19:10
Flights: 339
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1518, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1518 sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 339 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

On time

75.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 335 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.18%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 339 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 1518 flies

DL 1518 flies ATL to RDU without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:10, used on 56 of 339 flights, with 19:20 (49 flights) and 19:48 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 19:1056 flights16.5%
Departs 19:2049 flights14.5%
Departs 19:4835 flights10.3%

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 19:10 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 1518 runs 8 points better at 75.8%. 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 1518 next to ATL to RDU

Every carrier on ATL to RDU combined arrived on time 80.4% of the time across 4,617 flights, so DL 1518 is 5 points behind it. Delta flew 3,799 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 6 points.

DL 1518 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1518thin sample	339	75.8%	61 min	1.18%	B
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–RDU	3,799	83.2%	56 min	1.24%	B
All carriers on ATL–RDU	4,617	80.4%	61 min	1.43%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1518 quarter by quarter

DL 1518 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 84.6% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 71.4%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 85 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 202592 flights72.5%
Oct–Dec 202566 flights84.6%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights77.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights71.4%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1518 did best on Wednesday at 83.0% on time and worst on Friday at 70.8%. Each day rests on about 48 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1518 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 4,932 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
45%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
7%

36% 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 4,932 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 4,932 delay minutes reported on DL 1518.

Cancellations sit at 1.18% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.5% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

Every one of the 339 flights under DL 1518 in the data flew ATL to RDU. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 339 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 1518

For a booking, read DL 1518 as 75.8% on time with 1.18% cancelled over 339 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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