Flight number record
DL 2542
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to New Orleans
- Route
- ATL → MSY
- Departs
- 11:05
- Flights
- 362
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2542, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2542 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 362 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2542's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 107 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 362 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 2542 flies
DL 2542 flies ATL to MSY without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:05, used on 80 of 362 flights, with 11:10 (51 flights) and 11:20 (38 flights) next.
- Departs 11:0580 flights22.1%
- Departs 11:1051 flights14.1%
- Departs 11:2038 flights10.5%
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 11:05 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and DL 2542 runs 10 points better at 88.0%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
DL 2542 next to ATL to MSY
Every carrier on ATL to MSY combined arrived on time 81.4% of the time across 4,002 flights, so DL 2542 is 7 points ahead of it. Delta flew 3,276 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2542thin sample | 362 | 88.0% | 54 min | 1.10% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–MSY | 3,276 | 83.5% | 59 min | 1.47% | B |
| All carriers on ATL–MSY | 4,002 | 81.4% | 59 min | 1.45% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2542 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 2542 held fairly steady: 90.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 87.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 83.7% in Jan–Mar 2026, 89.0% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 91.9% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights87.6%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights83.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights89.0%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights91.9%
Scale runs 75% to 95%.
By weekday, DL 2542 did best on Thursday at 94.2% on time and worst on Saturday at 81.2%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2542 runs when it is late
DL 2542 often beats the schedule: 91 of 358 completed flights, 25%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 43 late arrivals split 16 under half an hour, 17 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early91 flights25.4%
- Within 15 min224 flights62.6%
- 15–29 min late16 flights4.5%
- 30–59 min late17 flights4.7%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 358 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
9 of 44 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. 8 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2542
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 4 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December 2025 | 4 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 September 2025 | 3 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 November 2025 | 3 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 January 2026 | 2 hours 24 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 13 July 2026 | 1 hour 47 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 2542 runs late
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 2,337 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,337 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 2,337 delay minutes reported on DL 2542.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.8% 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.
DL 2542 is not only a ATL to MSY flight. It also flew MSY to ATL (362 flights, 85.7% 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. 362 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MSY to ATLthin sample | 362 | 85.7% | 69 min | 1.10% | A |
What to do with this
Booking DL 2542
For a booking, DL 2542 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 88.0% on time and 1.10% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to MSY, every carrier and departure
- MSY to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1450 on the same route75.8%
- Delta Air Lines 2224 on the same route82.8%
- Delta Air Lines 3128 on the same route93.0%
- Delta Air Lines 3146 on the same route77.2%
- Delta Air Lines 3157 on the same route83.3%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) 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.