Flight number record

DL 2738

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Chicago

Route: ATL → ORD
Departs: 15:50
Flights: 365
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2738, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2738 earns a D−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 57.6% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 20 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average about an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 2738 runs 20 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 197 extra late arrivals.

On time

57.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 349 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.01%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

10.9%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Schedule

When DL 2738 flies

DL 2738 flies ATL to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:50, used on 75 of 365 flights, with 15:40 (64 flights) next.

Departs 15:5075 flights20.5%
Departs 15:4064 flights17.5%

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 15:50 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and DL 2738 runs 14 points worse at 57.6%. 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 2738 next to ATL to ORD

Every carrier on ATL to ORD combined arrived on time 69.0% of the time across 6,493 flights, so DL 2738 is 11 points behind it. Delta flew 2,631 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 67.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 23 points.

DL 2738 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2738	365	57.6%	57 min	3.01%	D−
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–ORD	2,631	67.6%	63 min	2.20%	C
All carriers on ATL–ORD	6,493	69.0%	83 min	2.40%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 2738 quarter by quarter

DL 2738 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 83.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 50.0%, a swing of 33 points on roughly 73 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 flights83.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights61.8%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights50.0%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights57.3%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights50.0%

Scale runs 40% to 90%.

By weekday, DL 2738 did best on Monday at 64.6% on time and worst on Friday at 51.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 2738 runs when it is late

Most of the lateness is short. 76 of the 148 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 38 reached an hour or more.

15+ min early18 flights5.2%
Within 15 min183 flights52.4%
15–29 min late76 flights21.8%
30–59 min late34 flights9.7%
1–2 hours late23 flights6.6%
2+ hours late15 flights4.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 349 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 95 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 10 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 63 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 2738

The latest arrival of the period was on 6 March 2026, 6 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across March, June, August and July, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of DL 2738 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
6 March 2026	6 hours 23 minutes	Carrier
14 June 2026	5 hours 37 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
31 August 2026	5 hours 10 minutes	National Airspace System
17 July 2026	4 hours 19 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
4 July 2026	4 hours 3 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why DL 2738 runs late

National Airspace System accounts for 52% of the 8,396 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

National Airspace System
52%
Carrier
30%
Late-arriving aircraft
15%
Extreme weather
3%

52% 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 4,400 minutes out of 8,396, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,396 delay minutes reported on DL 2738.

Cancellations run at 3.01%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

10.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 606 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.

The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including ORD to ATL (237), but none flew often enough under DL 2738 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to ORD only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 2738

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 2738: 3.01% of its 365 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures