Flight number record

DL 1531

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Albuquerque

Route: ATL → ABQ
Departs: 20:53
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1531, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1531 lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

On time

79.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights

Avg delay

47 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.64%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 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 1531 flies

DL 1531 flies ATL to ABQ without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:53, used on 60 of 365 flights, with 21:15 (58 flights) and 21:25 (39 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 20:5360 flights16.4%
Departs 21:1558 flights15.9%
Departs 21:2539 flights10.7%

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 20:53 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 1531 runs 9 points better at 79.1%. 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 1531 next to ATL to ABQ

Every carrier on ATL to ABQ combined arrived on time 85.3% of the time across 996 flights, so DL 1531 is 6 points behind it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 3 points.

DL 1531 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1531	365	79.1%	47 min	1.64%	B
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–ABQ	996	85.3%	47 min	1.51%	A
All carriers on ATL–ABQ	996	85.3%	47 min	1.51%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1531 quarter by quarter

DL 1531 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 85.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 71.4%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 91 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 flights71.4%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights82.0%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights77.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights85.7%

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

By weekday, DL 1531 ranged from 75.5% on Tuesday to 84.0% on Saturday. With about 52 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 1531 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 53% of the 3,540 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
53%
National Airspace System
24%
Late-arriving aircraft
18%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, 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 1,888 of the 3,540 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,540 delay minutes reported on DL 1531.

Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% 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 1,269 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.

Every one of the 365 flights under DL 1531 in the data flew ATL to ABQ. 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. 365 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 1531

For a booking, DL 1531 is one of the weaker ways to fly ATL to ABQ: 6 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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