Flight number record

DL 401

Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Atlanta

Route: DFW → ATL
Departs: 05:25
Flights: 365
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 401, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 401 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 15 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 365 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 401's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 152 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

92.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 348 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.38%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

1.1%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 365 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 401 flies

DL 401 flies DFW to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 05:25, used on 100 of 365 flights, with 05:30 (77 flights) and 05:49 (60 flights) next.

Departs 05:25100 flights27.4%
Departs 05:3077 flights21.1%
Departs 05:4960 flights16.4%

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 05:25 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 401 runs 3 points better at 92.5%. 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 401 next to DFW to ATL

Every carrier on DFW to ATL combined arrived on time 75.6% of the time across 6,672 flights, so DL 401 is 17 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,785 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 11 points.

DL 401 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 401	365	92.5%	82 min	4.38%	A−
All Delta Air Lines on DFW–ATL	2,785	83.5%	83 min	2.59%	B
All carriers on DFW–ATL	6,672	75.6%	74 min	2.52%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 401 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 401 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 92.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 96.3% in Jan–Mar 2026, 87.6% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 94.8% in Jul–Sep 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 202530 flights93.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights92.2%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights96.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights87.6%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights94.8%

Scale runs 80% to 100%.

By weekday, DL 401 ranged from 89.4% on Saturday to 98.1% on Thursday. With about 52 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 401 runs when it is late

DL 401 often beats the schedule: 145 of 348 completed flights, 42%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 15 of the 26 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 4 reached an hour or more.

15+ min early145 flights41.7%
Within 15 min177 flights50.9%
15–29 min late15 flights4.3%
30–59 min late7 flights2.0%
1–2 hours late1 flights0.3%
2+ hours late3 flights0.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 348 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

7 of 25 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. 8 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 401

The latest arrival of the period was on 22 June 2026, 18 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of DL 401 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
22 June 2026	18 hours 4 minutes	Carrier
24 November 2025	3 hours 55 minutes	Extreme weather
4 April 2026	2 hours 34 minutes	Extreme weather
10 November 2025	1 hour	Carrier
20 May 2026	53 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why DL 401 runs late

Carrier accounts for 63% of the 2,120 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
63%
Extreme weather
23%
National Airspace System
14%
Late-arriving aircraft
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 23% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,120 delay minutes reported on DL 401.

Cancellations run at 4.38%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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 1.1% 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 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 365 flights under DL 401 in the data flew DFW 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. 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.

What to do with this

Booking DL 401

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 401: 4.38% of its 365 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