Flight number record
DL 2738
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Chicago
- Route
- ATL → ORD
- Departs
- 15:40
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2738, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2738 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 2738 runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 170 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 348 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.74%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
9.8%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 2738 flies
DL 2738 flies ATL to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:40, used on 64 of 365 flights, with 15:50 (44 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 15:4064 flights17.5%
- Departs 15:5044 flights12.1%
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 15:40 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 2738 runs 12 points worse at 60.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
DL 2738 next to ATL to ORD
Every carrier on ATL to ORD combined arrived on time 70.6% of the time across 6,406 flights, so DL 2738 is 10 points behind it. Delta flew 2,625 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 69.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 21 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2738 | 365 | 60.6% | 52 min | 2.74% | D |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–ORD | 2,625 | 69.1% | 63 min | 2.21% | C |
| All carriers on ATL–ORD | 6,406 | 70.6% | 81 min | 2.34% | C |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | 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 73.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 50.0%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 91 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 202592 flights73.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights61.8%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights50.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights57.3%
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2738 ranged from 52.8% on Tuesday to 64.6% on Monday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 12 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why DL 2738 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 52% of the 7,108 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.
- 52%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 10%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 2,445 of the 7,108 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,108 delay minutes reported on DL 2738.
Cancellations run at 2.74%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.8% 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 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. 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.
DL 2738 is not only a ATL to ORD flight. It also flew ORD to ATL (289 flights, 65.4% 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. 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ORD to ATLthin sample | 289 | 65.4% | 91 min | 2.77% | C |
What to do with this
Booking DL 2738
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 2738: 2.74% of its 365 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs roughly 50 minutes, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to ATL, the return direction
- United Airlines 516 on the same route72.9%
- Delta Air Lines 1147 on the same route79.2%
- Frontier Airlines 1441 on the same route70.8%
- United Airlines 1046 on the same route58.9%
- Delta Air Lines 2879 on the same route46.8%
- Delta Air Lines 1178 on the same route88.0%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.