Flight number record

DL 489

Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Raleigh

Route: SEA → RDU
Departs: 15:55
Flights: 360
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 489, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 489 lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 360 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

On time

76.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights

Avg delay

49 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.39%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 360 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 489 flies

DL 489 flies SEA to RDU without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:55, used on 89 of 360 flights, with 15:59 (72 flights) and 15:54 (56 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:5589 flights24.7%
Departs 15:5972 flights20.0%
Departs 15:5456 flights15.6%

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 15:55 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 489 runs 4 points better at 76.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 489 next to SEA to RDU

Every carrier on SEA to RDU combined arrived on time 78.6% of the time across 919 flights, so DL 489 is 2 points behind it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 5 points.

DL 489 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 489thin sample	360	76.6%	49 min	1.39%	B
All Delta Air Lines on SEA–RDUthin sample	364	76.8%	49 min	1.37%	B
All carriers on SEA–RDU	919	78.6%	44 min	1.09%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 489 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 489 held fairly steady: 77.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 76.5% in Oct–Dec 2025, 79.1% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 73.6% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights77.2%
Oct–Dec 202587 flights76.5%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights79.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.6%

Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 489 did best on Tuesday at 83.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 70.6%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 489 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 53% of the 4,094 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
53%
National Airspace System
24%
Late-arriving aircraft
22%
Extreme weather
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, 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 2,174 of the 4,094 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,094 delay minutes reported on DL 489.

Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.9% 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 2,354 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.

Every one of the 360 flights under DL 489 in the data flew SEA to RDU. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 360 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 489

For a booking, read DL 489 as 76.6% on time with 1.39% cancelled over 360 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