Flight number record
DL 2502
Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Houston
- Route
- SLC → IAH
- Departs
- 07:45
- Flights
- 356
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2502, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2502 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 356 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2502's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 117 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights
Avg delay
43 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 356 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 2502 flies
DL 2502 flies SLC to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:45, used on 98 of 356 flights, with 09:25 (40 flights) next.
- Departs 07:4598 flights27.5%
- Departs 09:2540 flights11.2%
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 07:45 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2502 runs level with that at 89.0%. 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 2502 next to SLC to IAH
Every carrier on SLC to IAH combined arrived on time 86.1% of the time across 1,931 flights, so DL 2502 is 3 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,016 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2502thin sample | 356 | 89.0% | 43 min | 0.28% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on SLC–IAH | 1,016 | 83.1% | 77 min | 0.20% | B+ |
| All carriers on SLC–IAH | 1,931 | 86.1% | 77 min | 0.73% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2502 quarter by quarter
DL 2502 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 83.9%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 71 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 202592 flights91.2%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights88.9%
- Apr–Jun 202687 flights83.9%
- Jul–Sep 202657 flights89.5%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 2502 ranged from 86.3% on Wednesday to 92.3% on Tuesday. With about 51 flights behind each day, a spread of 6 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2502 runs when it is late
DL 2502 often beats the schedule: 130 of 355 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 39 late arrivals split 19 under half an hour, 14 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 6 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early130 flights36.6%
- Within 15 min186 flights52.4%
- 15–29 min late19 flights5.4%
- 30–59 min late14 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights0.8%
- 2+ hours late3 flights0.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 355 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 33 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2502
The latest arrival of the period was on 4 September 2025, 2 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 4 September 2025 | 2 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 May 2026 | 2 hours 42 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 August 2026 | 2 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 1 hour 27 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 6 June 2026 | 1 hour 17 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 2502 runs late
Carrier accounts for 56% of the 1,674 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Carrier
- 38%National Airspace System
- 4%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
38% 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 629 minutes out of 1,674, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,674 delay minutes reported on DL 2502.
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 1.7% 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.
The 1,195 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.
Every one of the 356 flights under DL 2502 in the data flew SLC to IAH. 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. 356 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 2502
For a booking, DL 2502 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 89.0% on time and 0.28% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to SLC, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2514 on the same route78.2%
- United Airlines 2366 on the same route94.4%
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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.