Flight number record

DL 3186

Delta Air Lines · Charlotte to Atlanta

Route: CLT → ATL
Departs: 05:30
Flights: 255
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 3186, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 3186 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 a little over an hour. That rests on 255 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 3186'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 244 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.31%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

1.2%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 255 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 3186 flies

DL 3186 flies CLT to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 05:30, used on 128 of 255 flights, with 05:25 (59 flights) and 06:00 (37 flights) next.

Departs 05:30128 flights50.2%
Departs 05:2559 flights23.1%
Departs 06:0037 flights14.5%

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 05:30 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 3186 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 3186 next to CLT to ATL

Every carrier on CLT to ATL combined arrived on time 81.3% of the time across 4,383 flights, so DL 3186 is 14 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,587 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 86.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 14 points.

DL 3186 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 3186thin sample	255	95.1%	77 min	4.31%	A−
All Delta Air Lines on CLT–ATL	2,587	86.2%	81 min	1.31%	A
All carriers on CLT–ATL	4,383	81.3%	76 min	1.96%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 3186 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 3186 held fairly steady: 92.8% in Jan–Mar 2026, 96.6% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Oct–Dec 202512 flights—
Jan–Mar 202690 flights92.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights96.6%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights96.7%

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

By weekday, DL 3186 ranged from 91.2% on Sunday to 100.0% on Wednesday. With about 36 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 3186 runs when it is late

DL 3186 often beats the schedule: 112 of 244 completed flights, 46%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 6 of the 12 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 3 reached an hour or more.

15+ min early112 flights45.9%
Within 15 min120 flights49.2%
15–29 min late6 flights2.5%
30–59 min late3 flights1.2%
1–2 hours late0 flights0.0%
2+ hours late3 flights1.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 244 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Only 9 of 244 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 3186

The latest arrival of the period was on 16 March 2026, 4 hours 24 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).

The latest arrivals of DL 3186 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
16 March 2026	4 hours 24 minutes	National Airspace System
17 March 2026	4 hours 16 minutes	Carrier
19 June 2026	2 hours 13 minutes	Carrier
15 August 2026	58 minutes	Carrier
8 February 2026	54 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why DL 3186 runs late

Carrier accounts for 60% of the 921 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
60%
National Airspace System
40%

40% 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 371 minutes out of 921, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 921 delay minutes reported on DL 3186.

Cancellations run at 4.31%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.2% 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.

The same number turns up on three other city pairs in the data, including MEM to ATL (88), ATL to MEM (35) and JFK to STT (1), but none flew often enough under DL 3186 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to CLT to ATL only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 255 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 3186

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 3186: 4.31% of its 255 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

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