Flight number record

DL 478

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Portland

Route: ATL → PDX
Departs: 19:45
Flights: 263
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 478, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 478 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 263 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 478 runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 46 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 260 completed flights

Avg delay

47 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.76%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

5.8%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 263 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

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Schedule

When DL 478 flies

DL 478 flies ATL to PDX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:45, used on 104 of 263 flights, with 19:59 (41 flights) and 19:54 (36 flights) next.

Departs 19:45104 flights39.5%
Departs 19:5941 flights15.6%
Departs 19:5436 flights13.7%

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 19:45 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 478 runs 5 points better at 72.7%. 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 478 next to ATL to PDX

Every carrier on ATL to PDX combined arrived on time 78.4% of the time across 1,545 flights, so DL 478 is 6 points behind it. Delta flew 1,257 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 8 points.

DL 478 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 478thin sample	263	72.7%	47 min	0.76%	C+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–PDX	1,257	77.5%	48 min	0.95%	B+
All carriers on ATL–PDX	1,545	78.4%	50 min	0.91%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 478 quarter by quarter

DL 478 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 67.5%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 66 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 flights90.0%
Oct–Dec 202580 flights72.5%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights67.5%
Apr–Jun 202667 flights71.6%

Scale runs 60% to 95%.

By weekday, DL 478 did best on Wednesday at 89.2% on time and worst on Monday at 55.3%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 34 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 478 runs when it is late

The 71 late arrivals split 32 under half an hour, 24 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 15 an hour or more.

15+ min early47 flights18.1%
Within 15 min142 flights54.6%
15–29 min late32 flights12.3%
30–59 min late24 flights9.2%
1–2 hours late8 flights3.1%
2+ hours late7 flights2.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 260 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

9 of 51 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. In the other direction, 29 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at PDX.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 478

The latest arrival of the period was on 8 November 2025, 3 hours 25 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across November, March and May, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of DL 478 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
8 November 2025	3 hours 25 minutes	National Airspace System
16 March 2026	2 hours 42 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
17 March 2026	2 hours 27 minutes	Carrier
17 May 2026	2 hours 19 minutes	Carrier
30 November 2025	2 hours 6 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why DL 478 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 3,356 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
41%
National Airspace System
33%
Late-arriving aircraft
24%
Extreme weather
3%

The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,371 of the 3,356 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,356 delay minutes reported on DL 478.

Cancellations are rare at 0.76%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.8% 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 roughly 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 2,172 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The same number turns up on five other city pairs in the data, including DCA to ATL (29), LGA to EYW (16) and EYW to LGA (16), but none flew often enough under DL 478 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to PDX only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 263 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 478

For a booking, DL 478 is one of the weaker ways to fly ATL to PDX: 6 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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