Flight number record

DL 1704

Delta Air Lines · Des Moines to Atlanta

Route: DSM → ATL
Departs: 11:23
Flights: 353
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1704, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1704 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 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 353 flights, with a median arrival 19 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1704's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 110 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 343 completed flights

Avg delay

84 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.27%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 353 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 19 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 1704 flies

DL 1704 flies DSM to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:23, used on 59 of 353 flights, with 11:28 (40 flights) and 11:33 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 11:2359 flights16.7%
Departs 11:2840 flights11.3%
Departs 11:3336 flights10.2%

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 11:23 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and DL 1704 runs 10 points better at 88.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 1704 next to DSM to ATL

Every carrier on DSM to ATL combined arrived on time 89.8% of the time across 1,250 flights, so DL 1704 is about level with it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 7 points.

DL 1704 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1704thin sample	353	88.6%	84 min	2.27%	A
All Delta Air Lines on DSM–ATL	1,250	89.8%	91 min	2.24%	A
All carriers on DSM–ATL	1,250	89.8%	91 min	2.24%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1704 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1704 held fairly steady: 90.1% in Jul–Sep 2025, 85.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 86.7% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 92.1% 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 202582 flights90.1%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights85.6%
Jan–Mar 202688 flights86.7%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.1%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1704 did best on Sunday at 95.9% on time and worst on Monday at 80.4%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1704 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 3,260 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
54%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
1%

54% 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 3,260 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 3,260 delay minutes reported on DL 1704.

Cancellations sit at 2.27% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.57%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.0% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 743 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 1704 is not only a DSM to ATL flight. It also flew ATL to DSM (353 flights, 87.2% 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. 353 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 1704
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
ATL to DSMthin sample	353	87.2%	56 min	2.55%	A

What to do with this

Booking DL 1704

For a booking, read DL 1704 as 88.6% on time with 2.27% cancelled over 353 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