Flight number record

DL 481

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Seattle

Route: ATL → SEA
Departs: 16:29
Flights: 308
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 481, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 481 lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 308 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

On time

81.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 308 completed flights

Avg delay

46 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 308 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 481 flies

DL 481 flies ATL to SEA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:29, used on 38 of 308 flights, with 16:28 (36 flights) and 13:57 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 16:2938 flights12.3%
Departs 16:2836 flights11.7%
Departs 13:5735 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 16:29 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 481 runs 9 points better at 81.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 481 next to ATL to SEA

Every carrier on ATL to SEA combined arrived on time 77.8% of the time across 3,277 flights, so DL 481 is 4 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,371 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 481 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 481thin sample	308	81.5%	46 min	0.00%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–SEA	2,371	79.1%	53 min	0.46%	B+
All carriers on ATL–SEA	3,277	77.8%	54 min	0.64%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 481 quarter by quarter

DL 481 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 89.0% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 74.4%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 77 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 202541 flights87.8%
Oct–Dec 202586 flights74.4%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights77.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights89.0%

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 481 ranged from 76.7% on Thursday to 86.4% on Wednesday. With about 44 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 481 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 2,623 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
42%
National Airspace System
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
18%
Extreme weather
3%

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 1,091 of the 2,623 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,623 delay minutes reported on DL 481.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% 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.

At 2,182 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 two other city pairs in the data, including SNA to SEA (47) and DFW to MSP (1), but none flew often enough under DL 481 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to SEA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 308 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 481

For a booking, read DL 481 as 81.5% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 308 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

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