Flight number record

DL 3040

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Little Rock

Route: ATL → LIT
Departs: 10:42
Flights: 350
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 3040, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 3040 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 350 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 3040's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 133 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 340 completed flights

Avg delay

79 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 350 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 3040 flies

DL 3040 flies ATL to LIT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:42, used on 36 of 350 flights, with 09:44 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:4236 flights10.3%
Departs 09:4436 flights10.3%

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 10:42 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 3040 runs 7 points better at 90.9%. 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 3040 next to ATL to LIT

Every carrier on ATL to LIT combined arrived on time 85.4% of the time across 2,288 flights, so DL 3040 is 6 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 9 points.

DL 3040 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 3040thin sample	350	90.9%	79 min	2.00%	A
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–LIT	2,288	85.4%	67 min	1.84%	A
All carriers on ATL–LIT	2,288	85.4%	67 min	1.84%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 3040 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 3040 held fairly steady: 87.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 91.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 90.4% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 94.0% 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 202592 flights87.8%
Oct–Dec 202586 flights91.7%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights90.4%
Apr–Jun 202683 flights94.0%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 3040 ranged from 87.5% on Monday to 98.1% on Tuesday. With about 50 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 3040 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 72% of the 2,435 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
72%
National Airspace System
15%
Late-arriving aircraft
10%
Extreme weather
3%

The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, 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 1,757 of the 2,435 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,435 delay minutes reported on DL 3040.

Cancellations sit at 2.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.86%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% 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.

DL 3040 is not only a ATL to LIT flight. It also flew LIT to ATL (350 flights, 90.7% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 350 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.

Other routes flown as DL 3040
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
LIT to ATLthin sample	350	90.7%	127 min	1.71%	A

What to do with this

Booking DL 3040

For a booking, read DL 3040 as 90.9% on time with 2.00% cancelled over 350 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