Flight number record
DL 2050
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Buffalo
- Route
- ATL → BUF
- Departs
- 16:42
- Flights
- 276
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2050, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2050 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 276 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Key figures
On time
73.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 269 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.54%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
8.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 276 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Schedule
When DL 2050 flies
DL 2050 flies ATL to BUF without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:42, used on 40 of 276 flights.
- Departs 16:4240 flights14.5%
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 16:42 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and DL 2050 runs level with that at 73.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
DL 2050 next to ATL to BUF
Every carrier on ATL to BUF combined arrived on time 76.9% of the time across 1,534 flights, so DL 2050 is 3 points behind it. Delta flew 1,255 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2050thin sample | 276 | 73.6% | 61 min | 2.54% | C |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–BUF | 1,255 | 79.1% | 55 min | 1.75% | B |
| All carriers on ATL–BUF | 1,534 | 76.9% | 63 min | 1.89% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2050 quarter by quarter
DL 2050 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 80.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 52.1%, a swing of 28 points on roughly 69 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 202517 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202567 flights78.1%
- Jan–Mar 202669 flights80.3%
- Apr–Jun 202674 flights74.3%
- Jul–Sep 202649 flights52.1%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2050 ranged from 69.6% on Friday to 76.7% on Wednesday. With about 39 flights behind each day, a spread of 7 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2050 runs when it is late
The 71 late arrivals split 23 under half an hour, 24 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 24 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early30 flights11.2%
- Within 15 min168 flights62.5%
- 15–29 min late23 flights8.6%
- 30–59 min late24 flights8.9%
- 1–2 hours late16 flights5.9%
- 2+ hours late8 flights3.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 269 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
10 of 66 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 15 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at BUF.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2050
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 August 2026, 7 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 11 August 2026 | 7 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 July 2026 | 2 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 June 2026 | 2 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 May 2026 | 2 hours 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 November 2025 | 2 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 2050 runs late
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 4,346 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,346 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 4,346 delay minutes reported on DL 2050.
Cancellations run at 2.54%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
8.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
The 712 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.
The same number turns up on four other city pairs in the data, including BUF to ATL (219), MCO to MSP (6) and MCO to DTW (1), but none flew often enough under DL 2050 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to BUF only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 276 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 2050
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 2050: 2.54% of its 276 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to BUF, every carrier and departure
- BUF to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1384 on the same route87.1%
- Delta Air Lines 2334 on the same route74.0%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.