Flight number record
DL 2861
Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Los Angeles
- Route
- SEA → LAX
- Departs
- 17:59
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2861, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2861 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
74.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 365 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
10.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 2861 flies
DL 2861 flies SEA to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:59, used on 97 of 365 flights, with 17:40 (72 flights) and 17:55 (70 flights) next.
- Departs 17:5997 flights26.6%
- Departs 17:4072 flights19.7%
- Departs 17:5570 flights19.2%
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 17:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 2861 runs 6 points better at 74.2%. 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 2861 next to SEA to LAX
Every carrier on SEA to LAX combined arrived on time 82.0% of the time across 7,536 flights, so DL 2861 is 8 points behind it. Delta flew 2,229 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2861 | 365 | 74.2% | 69 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on SEA–LAX | 2,229 | 81.6% | 59 min | 0.58% | B+ |
| All carriers on SEA–LAX | 7,536 | 82.0% | 59 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2861 quarter by quarter
DL 2861 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 56.5%, a swing of 37 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 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights73.9%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights81.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.6%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights56.5%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 2861 did best on Monday at 86.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 67.3%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2861 runs when it is late
The 94 late arrivals split 32 under half an hour, 25 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early80 flights21.9%
- Within 15 min191 flights52.3%
- 15–29 min late32 flights8.8%
- 30–59 min late25 flights6.8%
- 1–2 hours late23 flights6.3%
- 2+ hours late14 flights3.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 365 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 86 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. In the other direction, 20 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 LAX.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2861
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 December 2025, 5 hours 3 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in March 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 December 2025 | 5 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 March 2026 | 4 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 March 2026 | 4 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 October 2025 | 3 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 March 2026 | 3 hours 23 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 2861 runs late
Carrier accounts for 48% of the 6,492 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,492 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 34 to one. The split is drawn from 6,492 delay minutes reported on DL 2861.
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
10.1% 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 954 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 365 flights under DL 2861 in the data flew SEA to LAX. 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. 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 2861
For a booking, DL 2861 is one of the weaker ways to fly SEA to LAX: 8 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to SEA, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2769 on the same route83.8%
- Delta Air Lines 1628 on the same route90.6%
- Delta Air Lines 2830 on the same route83.8%
- Alaska Airlines 505 on the same route82.8%
- Delta Air Lines 2914 on the same route84.0%
- Delta Air Lines 2854 on the same route74.8%
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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.