Flight number record

DL 436

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Dallas-Fort Worth

Route: ATL → DFW
Departs: 17:35
Flights: 301
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 436, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 436 draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 301 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 436 runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 119 extra late arrivals.

On time

65.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 286 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.32%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

11.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 301 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 436 flies

DL 436 flies ATL to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:35, used on 45 of 301 flights, with 17:15 (36 flights) and 17:34 (34 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:3545 flights15.0%
Departs 17:1536 flights12.0%
Departs 17:3434 flights11.3%

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 17:35 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 436 runs 3 points worse at 65.7%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 436 next to ATL to DFW

Every carrier on ATL to DFW combined arrived on time 74.3% of the time across 6,698 flights, so DL 436 is 9 points behind it. Delta flew 2,791 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 16 points.

DL 436 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 436thin sample	301	65.7%	57 min	4.32%	C−
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DFW	2,791	75.4%	57 min	2.51%	B
All carriers on ATL–DFW	6,698	74.3%	80 min	2.76%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 436 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 436 held fairly steady: 60.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 65.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 69.1% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 69.0% 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 202580 flights60.3%
Oct–Dec 202587 flights65.9%
Jan–Mar 202659 flights69.1%
Apr–Jun 202675 flights69.0%

Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 436 did best on Monday at 71.1% on time and worst on Tuesday at 57.1%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 436 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 5,538 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
40%
National Airspace System
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
20%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 2,200 of the 5,538 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,538 delay minutes reported on DL 436.

Cancellations run at 4.32%, against 1.81% 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.5% 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.

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. 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.

The same number turns up on four other city pairs in the data, including DFW to ATL (238), MIA to ATL (5) and ATL to MIA (5), but none flew often enough under DL 436 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to DFW only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 301 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 436

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 436: 4.32% of its 301 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures