Flight number record
DL 420
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- LAX → DFW
- Departs
- 18:59
- Flights
- 357
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 420, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 420 lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 357 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
81.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 352 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.40%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
7.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 357 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 420 flies
DL 420 flies LAX to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:59, used on 79 of 357 flights, with 18:35 (75 flights) and 18:55 (66 flights) next.
- Departs 18:5979 flights22.1%
- Departs 18:3575 flights21.0%
- Departs 18:5566 flights18.5%
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 18:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 420 runs 13 points better at 81.2%. 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 420 next to LAX to DFW
Every carrier on LAX to DFW combined arrived on time 74.9% of the time across 6,178 flights, so DL 420 is 6 points ahead of it. Delta flew 757 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 85.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 420thin sample | 357 | 81.2% | 76 min | 1.40% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on LAX–DFW | 757 | 85.4% | 75 min | 1.45% | A |
| All carriers on LAX–DFW | 6,178 | 74.9% | 79 min | 2.22% | C |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 420 quarter by quarter
DL 420 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 78.7%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 71 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 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights81.5%
- Jan–Mar 202683 flights80.8%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights79.1%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights78.7%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 420 did best on Friday at 86.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 73.5%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 420 runs when it is late
The 66 late arrivals split 17 under half an hour, 23 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 26 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early79 flights22.4%
- Within 15 min207 flights58.8%
- 15–29 min late17 flights4.8%
- 30–59 min late23 flights6.5%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights5.1%
- 2+ hours late8 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 352 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 66 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. 13 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 420
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 May 2026, 11 hours 17 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 May 2026 | 11 hours 17 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 December 2025 | 5 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 February 2026 | 4 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 July 2026 | 3 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 June 2026 | 3 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 420 runs late
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 5,001 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,486 of the 5,001 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,001 delay minutes reported on DL 420.
Cancellations sit at 1.40% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
7.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,235 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 357 flights under DL 420 in the data flew LAX 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. 357 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 420
For a booking, read DL 420 as 81.2% on time with 1.40% cancelled over 357 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to LAX, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 521 on the same route89.3%
- American Airlines 2746 on the same route87.0%
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.