Flight number record

DL 3038

Delta Air Lines · Columbia to Atlanta

Route: CAE → ATL
Departs: 05:35
Flights: 336
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.5 hours. That rests on 336 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 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 178 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

95.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 328 completed flights

Avg delay

148 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.08%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

3.7%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 336 flights between September 2025 and August 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.

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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 105 of 336 flights, with 05:40 (75 flights) and 05:34 (52 flights) next.

Departs 05:35105 flights31.3%
Departs 05:4075 flights22.3%
Departs 05:3452 flights15.5%

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 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.

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Against the route

DL 3038 next to CAE to ATL

Every carrier on CAE to ATL combined arrived on time 86.0% of the time across 1,871 flights, so DL 3038 is 9 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 86.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, 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	336	95.1%	148 min	2.08%	A
All Delta Air Lines on CAE–ATL	1,867	86.0%	94 min	1.50%	A
All carriers on CAE–ATL	1,871	86.0%	94 min	1.50%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 3038 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 3038 held fairly steady: 100.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 94.1% in Oct–Dec 2025, 97.5% in Jan–Mar 2026, 92.0% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 95.2% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202530 flights100.0%
Oct–Dec 202568 flights94.1%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights97.5%
Apr–Jun 202690 flights92.0%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights95.2%

Scale runs 85% to 100%.

By weekday, DL 3038 ranged from 91.1% on Sunday to 97.9% on Wednesday. With about 48 flights behind each day, a spread of 7 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 3038 runs when it is late

DL 3038 often beats the schedule: 180 of 328 completed flights, 55%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When DL 3038 is late it tends to be very late: 12 of its 16 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 6 were two hours or more.

15+ min early180 flights54.9%
Within 15 min132 flights40.2%
15–29 min late1 flights0.3%
30–59 min late3 flights0.9%
1–2 hours late6 flights1.8%
2+ hours late6 flights1.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 328 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 27 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 11 still arrived on time. No flight that left on time arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 3038

The latest arrival of the period was on 19 May 2026, 9 hours 22 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of DL 3038 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
19 May 2026	9 hours 22 minutes	Carrier
12 November 2025	6 hours 17 minutes	Carrier
23 February 2026	4 hours 3 minutes	Carrier
5 December 2025	2 hours 42 minutes	Carrier
14 June 2026	2 hours 22 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why DL 3038 runs late

Carrier accounts for 94% of the 2,374 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
94%
National Airspace System
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 94%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,237 of the 2,374 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,374 delay minutes reported on DL 3038.

Cancellations sit at 2.08% against a national 1.89%, 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 8.3% 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.

Every one of the 336 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. 336 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 2.08% cancelled over 336 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures