Flight number record
DL 31
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- ATL → DFW
- Departs
- 19:30
- Flights
- 279
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 31, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 31 draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 279 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 31 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 98 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 271 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.51%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
11.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 279 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 31 flies
DL 31 flies ATL to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:30, used on 50 of 279 flights, with 20:10 (37 flights) and 20:38 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 19:3050 flights17.9%
- Departs 20:1037 flights13.3%
- Departs 20:3837 flights13.3%
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 19:30 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 31 runs level with that at 67.5%. 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 31 next to ATL to DFW
Every carrier on ATL to DFW combined arrived on time 73.9% of the time across 6,672 flights, so DL 31 is 6 points behind it. Delta flew 2,784 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 14 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 31thin sample | 279 | 67.5% | 54 min | 2.51% | C |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DFW | 2,784 | 76.0% | 60 min | 2.55% | B |
| All carriers on ATL–DFW | 6,672 | 73.9% | 82 min | 2.50% | C |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 31 quarter by quarter
DL 31 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 80.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 61.4%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 70 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 202530 flights80.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights70.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights61.4%
- Apr–Jun 202667 flights65.7%
Scale runs 55% to 85%.
By weekday, DL 31 did best on Wednesday at 89.7% on time and worst on Sunday at 50.0%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 40 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 31 runs when it is late
The 88 late arrivals split 34 under half an hour, 24 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 30 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early39 flights14.4%
- Within 15 min144 flights53.1%
- 15–29 min late34 flights12.5%
- 30–59 min late24 flights8.9%
- 1–2 hours late26 flights9.6%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 271 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
18 of 89 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. In the other direction, 17 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 DFW.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 31
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 March 2026, 6 hours 50 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across March, November, June, December and January, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 March 2026 | 6 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 November 2025 | 3 hours 2 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 6 June 2026 | 2 hours 31 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 7 December 2025 | 2 hours 17 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 28 January 2026 | 1 hour 59 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 31 runs late
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 4,722 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,981 of the 4,722 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,722 delay minutes reported on DL 31.
Cancellations run at 2.51%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
11.1% 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.
The 731 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
Every one of the 279 flights under DL 31 in the data flew ATL to DFW. 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. 279 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 31
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 31: 2.51% of its 279 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs roughly 55 minutes, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to ATL, the return direction
- American Airlines 1567 on the same route86.4%
- Delta Air Lines 818 on the same route79.7%
- Delta Air Lines 921 on the same route76.1%
- Delta Air Lines 961 on the same route87.8%
- Delta Air Lines 839 on the same route79.8%
- Delta Air Lines 414 on the same route81.5%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.