Flight number record

DL 381

Delta Air Lines · Austin to San Francisco

Route: AUS → SFO
Departs: 10:30
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 381, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 381 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 381 runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 77 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.37%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

11.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When DL 381 flies

DL 381 flies AUS to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:30, used on 97 of 365 flights, with 11:05 (59 flights) and 10:57 (59 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:3097 flights26.6%
Departs 11:0559 flights16.2%
Departs 10:5759 flights16.2%

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 10:30 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 381 runs 14 points worse at 69.9%. 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 381 next to AUS to SFO

Every carrier on AUS to SFO combined arrived on time 74.9% of the time across 2,795 flights, so DL 381 is 5 points behind it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 12 points.

DL 381 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 381	365	69.9%	63 min	1.37%	C
All Delta Air Lines on AUS–SFO	444	66.7%	59 min	1.13%	C
All carriers on AUS–SFO	2,795	74.9%	65 min	0.86%	C+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 381 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 381 held fairly steady: 65.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 72.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 67.8% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 74.4% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights65.2%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights72.2%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights67.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights74.4%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 381 did best on Friday at 78.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 56.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 23 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 381 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 6,801 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
National Airspace System
31%
Extreme weather
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 2,460 of the 6,801 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,801 delay minutes reported on DL 381.

Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 1,504 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

DL 381 is not only a AUS to SFO flight. It also flew SFO to AUS (365 flights, 63.6% 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. 365 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 381
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SFO to AUS	365	63.6%	73 min	1.92%	D

What to do with this

Booking DL 381

For a booking, DL 381 is one of the weaker ways to fly AUS to SFO: 5 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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