Flight number record

DL 3038

Delta Air Lines · Columbia to Atlanta

Route: CAE → ATL
Departs: 05:35
Flights: 335
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 3038, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 3038 earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 18 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.5 hours. That rests on 335 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 3038's record is 18 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 175 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

95.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 327 completed flights

Avg delay

148 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.09%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 335 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 16 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.

Schedule

When DL 3038 flies

DL 3038 flies CAE to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 05:35, used on 115 of 335 flights, with 05:40 (77 flights) and 05:34 (52 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 05:35115 flights34.3%
Departs 05:4077 flights23.0%
Departs 05:3452 flights15.5%

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 05:35 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 3038 runs 6 points better at 95.1%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 3038 next to CAE to ATL

Every carrier on CAE to ATL combined arrived on time 87.6% of the time across 1,871 flights, so DL 3038 is 8 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,867 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 87.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 14 points.

DL 3038 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 3038thin sample	335	95.1%	148 min	2.09%	A
All Delta Air Lines on CAE–ATL	1,867	87.6%	89 min	1.39%	A
All carriers on CAE–ATL	1,871	87.6%	89 min	1.39%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 3038 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 3038 held fairly steady: 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 94.1% in Oct–Dec 2025, 97.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 92.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202591 flights96.7%
Oct–Dec 202568 flights94.1%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights97.5%
Apr–Jun 202690 flights92.0%

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 3038 ranged from 93.3% on Sunday to 97.9% on Friday. With about 48 flights behind each day, a spread of 5 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 3038 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 88% of the 2,361 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.

Carrier
88%
National Airspace System
6%
Late-arriving aircraft
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 88%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,074 of the 2,361 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,361 delay minutes reported on DL 3038.

Cancellations sit at 2.09% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.

Every one of the 335 flights under DL 3038 in the data flew CAE to ATL. 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. 335 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 3038

For a booking, read DL 3038 as 95.1% on time with 2.09% cancelled over 335 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