Flight number record
DL 2879
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Chicago
- Route
- ATL → ORD
- Departs
- 17:42
- Flights
- 344
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2879, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2879 earns an F, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 45.6% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 32 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 344 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 2879 runs 32 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 317 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
45.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 333 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.33%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
14.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 344 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Schedule
When DL 2879 flies
DL 2879 flies ATL to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:42, used on 65 of 344 flights, with 17:20 (48 flights) next.
- Departs 17:4265 flights18.9%
- Departs 17:2048 flights14.0%
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 17:42 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 2879 runs 22 points worse at 45.6%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
DL 2879 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 2879 is 23 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 35 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2879thin sample | 344 | 45.6% | 61 min | 2.33% | F |
| 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 2879 quarter by quarter
DL 2879 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 50.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 39.1%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 86 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 202529 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights40.2%
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights39.1%
- Apr–Jun 202690 flights50.0%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights40.0%
Scale runs 30% to 55%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2879 did best on Saturday at 60.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 25.0%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 35 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2879 runs when it is late
The 181 late arrivals split 73 under half an hour, 59 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 49 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early19 flights5.7%
- Within 15 min133 flights39.9%
- 15–29 min late73 flights21.9%
- 30–59 min late59 flights17.7%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights7.5%
- 2+ hours late24 flights7.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 333 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 102 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 84 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 2879
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 April 2026, 8 hours 25 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 April 2026 | 8 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 January 2026 | 5 hours 25 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 11 June 2026 | 5 hours 10 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 15 March 2026 | 5 hours 3 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 18 October 2025 | 4 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 2879 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 56% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 14%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
56% 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 6,162 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 11,030 delay minutes reported on DL 2879.
Cancellations sit at 2.33% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.87%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
14.7% 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 (144), but none flew often enough under DL 2879 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. 344 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 2879
For a booking, DL 2879 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 14.7% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2738 on the same route57.6%
- United Airlines 516 on the same route70.8%
- Delta Air Lines 1477 on the same route72.9%
- Delta Air Lines 1147 on the same route79.0%
- Frontier Airlines 1441 on the same route72.7%
- Delta Air Lines 1199 on the same route70.6%
- 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.