Flight number record

DL 2986

Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to San Francisco

Route: LAX → SFO
Departs: 21:49
Flights: 299
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2986, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2986 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 45 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 299 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 2986 runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 144 extra late arrivals.

On time

63.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 296 completed flights

Avg delay

46 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

9.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 299 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 2986 flies

DL 2986 flies LAX to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:49, used on 85 of 299 flights, with 21:20 (67 flights) and 21:35 (31 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:4985 flights28.4%
Departs 21:2067 flights22.4%
Departs 21:3531 flights10.4%

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 21:49 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 2986 runs 7 points worse at 63.2%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 2986 next to LAX to SFO

Every carrier on LAX to SFO combined arrived on time 64.8% of the time across 11,013 flights, so DL 2986 is 2 points behind it. Delta flew 2,373 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 65.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 18 points.

DL 2986 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2986thin sample	299	63.2%	46 min	1.00%	D
All Delta Air Lines on LAX–SFO	2,373	65.2%	55 min	1.52%	C
All carriers on LAX–SFO	11,013	64.8%	59 min	0.83%	D+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2986 quarter by quarter

DL 2986 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 82.8% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 37.8%, a swing of 45 points on roughly 75 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 202589 flights76.1%
Oct–Dec 202570 flights60.3%
Jan–Mar 202658 flights82.8%
Apr–Jun 202682 flights37.8%

Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2986 did best on Tuesday at 74.4% on time and worst on Friday at 55.6%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2986 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 53% of the 4,991 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.

National Airspace System
53%
Carrier
25%
Late-arriving aircraft
23%

53% 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 2,627 minutes out of 4,991, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,991 delay minutes reported on DL 2986.

Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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.

Every one of the 299 flights under DL 2986 in the data flew LAX to SFO. 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. 299 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 2986

For a booking, read DL 2986 as 63.2% on time with 1.00% cancelled over 299 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures