Flight number record
DL 2980
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Seattle
- Route
- LAX → SEA
- Departs
- 07:00
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2980, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2980 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 15 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 18 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2980's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 149 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
92.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.3%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 18 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 2980 flies
DL 2980 flies LAX to SEA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 98 of 364 flights, with 07:20 (80 flights) and 07:15 (60 flights) next.
- Departs 07:0098 flights26.9%
- Departs 07:2080 flights22.0%
- Departs 07:1560 flights16.5%
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 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2980 runs 3 points better at 92.2%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
DL 2980 next to LAX to SEA
Every carrier on LAX to SEA combined arrived on time 85.0% of the time across 7,534 flights, so DL 2980 is 7 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,228 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 85.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 11 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2980thin sample | 364 | 92.2% | 98 min | 1.37% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on LAX–SEA | 2,228 | 85.2% | 71 min | 0.67% | A+ |
| All carriers on LAX–SEA | 7,534 | 85.0% | 62 min | 0.84% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2980 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 2980 held fairly steady: 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 96.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 89.8% in Jan–Mar 2026, 89.9% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 90.3% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights96.7%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights89.8%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights89.9%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights90.3%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 2980 ranged from 90.2% on Wednesday to 96.1% on Sunday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 6 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2980 runs when it is late
DL 2980 often beats the schedule: 219 of 359 completed flights, 61%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 28 late arrivals split 10 under half an hour, 6 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early219 flights61.0%
- Within 15 min112 flights31.2%
- 15–29 min late10 flights2.8%
- 30–59 min late6 flights1.7%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 359 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
6 of 27 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. Only 7 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2980
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 November 2025, 10 hours 30 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 November 2025 | 10 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 May 2026 | 5 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 January 2026 | 5 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 January 2026 | 3 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 April 2026 | 2 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 2980 runs late
Carrier accounts for 71% of the 2,730 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 71%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 71%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,951 of the 2,730 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,730 delay minutes reported on DL 2980.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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 364 flights under DL 2980 in the data flew LAX to SEA. 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. 364 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 2980
For a booking, DL 2980 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 92.2% on time and 1.37% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to SEA, every carrier and departure
- SEA to LAX, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2606 on the same route83.1%
- Delta Air Lines 2640 on the same route81.8%
- Delta Air Lines 1714 on the same route91.7%
- Delta Air Lines 1045 on the same route86.9%
- Alaska Airlines 1305 on the same route73.3%
- Frontier Airlines 1177 on the same route83.6%
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.