Flight number record

DL 385

Delta Air Lines · Boston to Atlanta

Route: BOS → ATL
Departs: 09:05
Flights: 347
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 385, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 385 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 347 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 385's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 108 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 337 completed flights

Avg delay

87 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.88%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 347 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 385 flies

DL 385 flies BOS to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:05, used on 106 of 347 flights, with 17:25 (39 flights) and 09:15 (39 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 09:05106 flights30.5%
Departs 17:2539 flights11.2%
Departs 09:1539 flights11.2%

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 09:05 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 385 runs 4 points better at 88.4%. 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 385 next to BOS to ATL

Every carrier on BOS to ATL combined arrived on time 78.5% of the time across 4,931 flights, so DL 385 is 10 points ahead of it. Delta flew 3,662 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 7 points.

DL 385 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 385thin sample	347	88.4%	87 min	2.88%	A
All Delta Air Lines on BOS–ATL	3,662	82.1%	75 min	1.77%	B
All carriers on BOS–ATL	4,931	78.5%	69 min	1.99%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 385 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 385 held fairly steady: 92.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 84.5% in Oct–Dec 2025, 84.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91.0% in Apr–Jun 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 202592 flights92.3%
Oct–Dec 202587 flights84.5%
Jan–Mar 202678 flights84.9%
Apr–Jun 202690 flights91.0%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 385 did best on Wednesday at 98.1% on time and worst on Thursday at 82.7%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 385 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 3,385 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
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
39%
National Airspace System
13%

39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 3,385 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 3,385 delay minutes reported on DL 385.

Cancellations run at 2.88%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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

5.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 946 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

Every one of the 347 flights under DL 385 in the data flew BOS 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. 347 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 385

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 385: 2.88% of its 347 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures