Flight number record
DL 2686
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to San Antonio
- Route
- LAX → SAT
- Departs
- 18:59
- Flights
- 314
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2686, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2686 lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 314 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2686's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 55 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 314 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
7.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 314 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 2686 flies
DL 2686 flies LAX to SAT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:59, used on 136 of 314 flights, with 18:58 (50 flights) next.
- Departs 18:59136 flights43.3%
- Departs 18:5850 flights15.9%
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 18:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 2686 runs 15 points better at 82.8%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
DL 2686 next to LAX to SAT
Every carrier on LAX to SAT combined arrived on time 81.6% of the time across 1,814 flights, so DL 2686 is about level with it. Delta flew 679 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 85.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 2 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2686thin sample | 314 | 82.8% | 63 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on LAX–SAT | 679 | 85.9% | 74 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| All carriers on LAX–SAT | 1,814 | 81.6% | 61 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2686 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 2686 held fairly steady: 85.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 82.4% in Jan–Mar 2026, 80.5% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 81.1% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202525 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202585 flights85.9%
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights82.4%
- Apr–Jun 202677 flights80.5%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights81.1%
Scale runs 70% 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 70.8%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2686 runs when it is late
DL 2686 often beats the schedule: 110 of 314 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 54 late arrivals split 20 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 22 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early110 flights35.0%
- Within 15 min150 flights47.8%
- 15–29 min late20 flights6.4%
- 30–59 min late12 flights3.8%
- 1–2 hours late13 flights4.1%
- 2+ hours late9 flights2.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 314 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
10 of 59 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. Only 5 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2686
The latest arrival of the period was on 12 May 2026, 3 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 12 May 2026 | 3 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 May 2026 | 3 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 December 2025 | 2 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 April 2026 | 2 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 February 2026 | 2 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 2686 runs late
Carrier accounts for 54% of the 3,400 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,400 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. The split is drawn from 3,400 delay minutes reported on DL 2686.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
7.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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.
Every one of the 314 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. 314 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 82.8% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 314 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to SAT, every carrier and departure
- SAT to LAX, the return direction
- SkyWest Airlines 4962 on the same route83.3%
- Delta Air Lines 2568 on the same route88.9%
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- San Antonio International (SAT) 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.