Flight number record

DL 2686

Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to San Antonio

Route: LAX → SAT
Departs: 18:59
Flights: 319
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2686, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2686 lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 319 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

On time

81.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 318 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.31%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

9.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 319 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 2686 flies

DL 2686 flies LAX to SAT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:59, used on 102 of 319 flights, with 18:58 (54 flights) and 18:55 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:59102 flights32.0%
Departs 18:5854 flights16.9%
Departs 18:5535 flights11.0%

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 18:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 2686 runs 13 points better at 81.1%. 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 2686 next to LAX to SAT

Every carrier on LAX to SAT combined arrived on time 82.1% of the time across 1,881 flights, so DL 2686 is about level with it. Delta flew 684 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 2686 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2686thin sample	319	81.1%	68 min	0.31%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on LAX–SAT	684	84.1%	77 min	0.44%	B+
All carriers on LAX–SAT	1,881	82.1%	64 min	0.48%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2686 quarter by quarter

DL 2686 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 85.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 75.6%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 80 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 202583 flights75.6%
Oct–Dec 202585 flights85.9%
Jan–Mar 202674 flights82.4%
Apr–Jun 202677 flights80.5%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2686 did best on Wednesday at 89.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 68.1%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2686 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 52% of the 4,053 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.

Carrier
52%
Late-arriving aircraft
43%
National Airspace System
5%

43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 4,053 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 43 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 4,053 delay minutes reported on DL 2686.

Cancellations are rare at 0.31%, 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.7% 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 1,211 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 319 flights under DL 2686 in the data flew LAX to SAT. 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. 319 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 2686

For a booking, read DL 2686 as 81.1% on time with 0.31% cancelled over 319 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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