Flight number record
DL 2986
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to San Francisco
- Route
- LAX → SFO
- Departs
- 21:20
- Flights
- 282
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2986, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2986 earns a D+, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 57.1% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 20 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average roughly 50 minutes. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 282 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 2986 runs 20 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 202 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
57.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 280 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.71%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
11.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 282 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 2986 flies
DL 2986 flies LAX to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:20, used on 67 of 282 flights, with 22:00 (43 flights) and 21:49 (40 flights) next.
- Departs 21:2067 flights23.8%
- Departs 22:0043 flights15.2%
- Departs 21:4940 flights14.2%
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 21:20 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and DL 2986 runs 13 points worse at 57.1%. 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 2986 next to LAX to SFO
Every carrier on LAX to SFO combined arrived on time 60.1% of the time across 11,437 flights, so DL 2986 is 3 points behind it. Delta flew 2,373 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 60.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 24 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2986thin sample | 282 | 57.1% | 48 min | 0.71% | D+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on LAX–SFO | 2,373 | 60.9% | 53 min | 1.56% | D |
| All carriers on LAX–SFO | 11,437 | 60.1% | 57 min | 0.80% | D+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | 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 Jul–Sep 2026 at 37.8%, a swing of 45 points on roughly 71 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 202527 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202570 flights60.3%
- Jan–Mar 202658 flights82.8%
- Apr–Jun 202682 flights37.8%
- Jul–Sep 202645 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 71.1% on time and worst on Friday at 48.9%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2986 runs when it is late
The 120 late arrivals split 49 under half an hour, 38 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 33 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early57 flights20.4%
- Within 15 min103 flights36.8%
- 15–29 min late49 flights17.5%
- 30–59 min late38 flights13.6%
- 1–2 hours late26 flights9.3%
- 2+ hours late7 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 280 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 88 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 9 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 41 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 SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2986
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 March 2026, 2 hours 27 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 March 2026 | 2 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 July 2026 | 2 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 December 2025 | 2 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 July 2026 | 2 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 August 2026 | 2 hours 14 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 2986 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 57% of the 5,734 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
57% 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 3,240 minutes out of 5,734, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,734 delay minutes reported on DL 2986.
Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
11.8% 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.
Every one of the 282 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. 282 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 57.1% on time with 0.71% cancelled over 282 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to SFO, every carrier and departure
- SFO to LAX, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2267 on the same route44.3%
- United Airlines 2019 on the same route65.1%
- Delta Air Lines 1421 on the same route94.1%
- Delta Air Lines 1559 on the same route65.7%
- United Airlines 1791 on the same route55.4%
- Delta Air Lines 1715 on the same route48.3%
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) 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.