Flight number record
DL 2498
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Newark
- Route
- ATL → EWR
- Departs
- 18:54
- Flights
- 348
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2498, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2498 earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 56.2% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 21 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 2498 runs 21 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 214 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
56.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 340 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.30%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
20.0%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 348 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When DL 2498 flies
DL 2498 flies ATL to EWR without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:54, used on 53 of 348 flights, with 18:55 (37 flights) and 18:59 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 18:5453 flights15.2%
- Departs 18:5537 flights10.6%
- Departs 18:5935 flights10.1%
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 18:54 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 2498 runs 12 points worse at 56.2%. 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 2498 next to ATL to EWR
Every carrier on ATL to EWR combined arrived on time 72.8% of the time across 6,285 flights, so DL 2498 is 17 points behind it. Delta flew 3,055 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 71.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 25 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2498thin sample | 348 | 56.2% | 77 min | 2.30% | D |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–EWR | 3,055 | 71.5% | 66 min | 3.31% | C− |
| All carriers on ATL–EWR | 6,285 | 72.8% | 74 min | 3.34% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 2498 quarter by quarter
DL 2498 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 73.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 38.3%, a swing of 35 points on roughly 87 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 202585 flights50.6%
- Oct–Dec 202582 flights38.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights60.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.3%
Scale runs 30% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2498 did best on Saturday at 71.4% on time and worst on Thursday at 42.3%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 29 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 2498 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 61% of the 12,000 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.
- 61%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 7%Late-arriving aircraft
61% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 7,023 minutes out of 12,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 11,512 delay minutes reported on DL 2498.
Cancellations sit at 2.30% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 20.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 746 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 348 flights under DL 2498 in the data flew ATL to EWR. 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. 348 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 2498
For a booking, DL 2498 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 20.0% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to EWR, every carrier and departure
- EWR to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2322 on the same route74.4%
- Frontier Airlines 4602 on the same route56.0%
- Delta Air Lines 2312 on the same route69.9%
- Delta Air Lines 2397 on the same route86.1%
- Frontier Airlines 1158 on the same route69.4%
- Delta Air Lines 2527 on the same route62.7%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.