Flight number record

DL 461

Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to New York

Route: DFW → LGA
Departs: 06:00
Flights: 270
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 461, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 461 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 close to two hours. That rests on 270 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 461's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 112 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 258 completed flights

Avg delay

119 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.44%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 270 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 461 flies

DL 461 flies DFW to LGA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 137 of 270 flights, with 07:00 (59 flights) and 07:10 (51 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:00137 flights50.7%
Departs 07:0059 flights21.9%
Departs 07:1051 flights18.9%

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 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 461 runs level with that at 88.8%. 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 461 next to DFW to LGA

Every carrier on DFW to LGA combined arrived on time 67.1% of the time across 6,786 flights, so DL 461 is 22 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,955 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 73.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 7 points.

DL 461 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 461thin sample	270	88.8%	119 min	4.44%	A−
All Delta Air Lines on DFW–LGA	1,955	73.4%	96 min	4.55%	C−
All carriers on DFW–LGA	6,786	67.1%	77 min	4.82%	C−
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 461 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 461 held fairly steady: 93.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 88.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 83.8% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91.4% 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 202575 flights93.2%
Oct–Dec 202578 flights88.2%
Jan–Mar 202681 flights83.8%
Apr–Jun 202636 flights91.4%

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

By weekday, DL 461 ranged from 82.1% on Monday to 93.2% on Tuesday. With about 39 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 461 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 59% of the 3,456 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
59%
Extreme weather
21%
National Airspace System
10%
Late-arriving aircraft
10%

Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 3.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,456 delay minutes reported on DL 461.

Cancellations run at 4.44%, against 1.81% 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 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 1,389 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 three other city pairs in the data, including LAS to DTW (30), SEA to JFK (24) and BHM to ATL (5), but none flew often enough under DL 461 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DFW to LGA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 270 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 461

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 461: 4.44% of its 270 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs close to two hours, 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