Flight number record

DL 2502

Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Houston

Route: SLC → IAH
Departs: 07:45
Flights: 361
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 361 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2502's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 102 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.28%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 361 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

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 133 of 361 flights. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:45133 flights36.8%

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 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 87.8%. 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 2502 next to SLC to IAH

Every carrier on SLC to IAH combined arrived on time 84.7% of the time across 1,957 flights, so DL 2502 is 3 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,011 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 6 points.

DL 2502 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2502thin sample	361	87.8%	50 min	0.28%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on SLC–IAH	1,011	82.1%	81 min	0.20%	B+
All carriers on SLC–IAH	1,957	84.7%	75 min	0.82%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2502 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 2502 held fairly steady: 87.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 91.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 88.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 83.9% 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 202592 flights87.0%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights91.2%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights88.9%
Apr–Jun 202687 flights83.9%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2502 ranged from 84.6% on Thursday to 90.6% on Tuesday. With about 52 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.

Delay causes

Why DL 2502 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 2,210 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
42%
National Airspace System
32%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
Extreme weather
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 922 of the 2,210 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,210 delay minutes reported on DL 2502.

Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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 2.2% 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.

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. 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 361 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. 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 2502

For a booking, DL 2502 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 87.8% on time and 0.28% 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