Flight number record

DL 478

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Portland

Route: ATL → PDX
Departs: 19:45
Flights: 315
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 315 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 478 runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 40 extra late arrivals.

On time

73.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 311 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.95%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 315 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

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 315 flights, with 19:59 (41 flights) and 19:54 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 19:45104 flights33.0%
Departs 19:5941 flights13.0%
Departs 19:5436 flights11.4%

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 19:45 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 478 runs 5 points better at 73.6%. 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 478 next to ATL to PDX

Every carrier on ATL to PDX combined arrived on time 79.6% of the time across 1,576 flights, so DL 478 is 6 points behind it. Delta flew 1,288 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, 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	315	73.6%	50 min	0.95%	C+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–PDX	1,288	79.0%	49 min	1.01%	B
All carriers on ATL–PDX	1,576	79.6%	53 min	0.89%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	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 82.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 67.5%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 79 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 202582 flights82.7%
Oct–Dec 202580 flights72.5%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights67.5%
Apr–Jun 202667 flights71.6%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 478 did best on Wednesday at 84.4% on time and worst on Monday at 58.7%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 26 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

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 4,080 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
40%
National Airspace System
31%
Late-arriving aircraft
24%
Extreme weather
4%

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 1,649 of the 4,080 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,080 delay minutes reported on DL 478.

Cancellations sit at 0.95% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

6.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 50 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 four other city pairs in the data, including LGA to EYW (16), EYW to LGA (16) and BOS to LGA (5), 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. 315 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures