Flight number record

DL 1598

Delta Air Lines · San Francisco to Los Angeles

Route: SFO → LAX
Departs: 06:00
Flights: 361
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 17 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 3.1 hours. That rests on 361 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1598's record is 17 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 171 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

94.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights

Avg delay

188 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.55%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 361 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 1598 flies

DL 1598 flies SFO to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 143 of 361 flights, with 05:55 (130 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:00143 flights39.6%
Departs 05:55130 flights36.0%

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 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 5 points better at 94.7%. 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 1598 next to SFO to LAX

Every carrier on SFO to LAX combined arrived on time 73.9% of the time across 11,015 flights, so DL 1598 is 21 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 73.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 13 points.

DL 1598 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1598thin sample	361	94.7%	188 min	0.55%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on SFO–LAX	2,373	73.6%	65 min	1.56%	C
All carriers on SFO–LAX	11,015	73.9%	60 min	0.84%	C+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1598 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1598 held fairly steady: 94.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 93.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 98.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 92.3% 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 202590 flights94.4%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights93.3%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights98.9%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.3%

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1598 ranged from 92.3% on Thursday to 96.2% on Monday. 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.

Delay causes

Why DL 1598 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 97% of the 3,562 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
97%
National Airspace System
3%

The largest share of delay minutes, 97%, 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 3,455 of the 3,562 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,562 delay minutes reported on DL 1598.

Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, below the national 1.81% 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 2.8% 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.

Every one of the 361 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. 361 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: 94.7% on time and 0.55% 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