Flight number record
DL 1598
Delta Air Lines · San Francisco to Los Angeles
- Route
- SFO → LAX
- Departs
- 06:00
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1598, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1598 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 about 2.4 hours. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1598's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 161 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights
Avg delay
147 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 1598 flies
DL 1598 flies SFO to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 137 of 363 flights, with 05:55 (76 flights) and 07:00 (57 flights) next.
- Departs 06:00137 flights37.7%
- Departs 05:5576 flights20.9%
- Departs 07:0057 flights15.7%
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 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 1598 runs 4 points better at 93.4%. 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 1598 next to SFO to LAX
Every carrier on SFO to LAX combined arrived on time 70.9% of the time across 11,437 flights, so DL 1598 is 23 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,373 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 69.8% 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 1598thin sample | 363 | 93.4% | 147 min | 0.28% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on SFO–LAX | 2,373 | 69.8% | 63 min | 1.56% | C |
| All carriers on SFO–LAX | 11,437 | 70.9% | 58 min | 0.82% | C+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1598 quarter by quarter
DL 1598 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 98.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 85.5%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 73 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 202530 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights93.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights98.9%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.3%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights85.5%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 1598 ranged from 90.6% on Monday to 94.2% on Wednesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 4 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1598 runs when it is late
DL 1598 often beats the schedule: 146 of 362 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 24 late arrivals split 9 under half an hour, 6 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 9 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early146 flights40.3%
- Within 15 min192 flights53.0%
- 15–29 min late9 flights2.5%
- 30–59 min late6 flights1.7%
- 1–2 hours late0 flights0.0%
- 2+ hours late9 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 362 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 17 of 362 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1598
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 16 hours 25 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December 2025 | 16 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 September 2025 | 8 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 December 2025 | 8 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 November 2025 | 7 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 August 2026 | 2 hours 43 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1598 runs late
Carrier accounts for 89% of the 3,518 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 89%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 89%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,146 of the 3,518 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,518 delay minutes reported on DL 1598.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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 2.5% 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.
Every one of the 363 flights under DL 1598 in the data flew SFO to LAX. 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. 363 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 1598
For a booking, DL 1598 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 93.4% on time and 0.28% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to SFO, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1421 on the same route89.7%
- Delta Air Lines 2267 on the same route49.2%
- United Airlines 2179 on the same route68.5%
- United Airlines 1754 on the same route71.8%
- Delta Air Lines 1715 on the same route56.1%
- United Airlines 1164 on the same route73.7%
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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.