Flight number record
DL 493
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Denver
- Route
- ATL → DEN
- Departs
- 20:54
- Flights
- 269
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 493, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 493 lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That rests on 269 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
77.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 267 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.37%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
6.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 269 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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.
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Schedule
When DL 493 flies
DL 493 flies ATL to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:54, used on 45 of 269 flights, with 20:25 (33 flights) next.
- Departs 20:5445 flights16.7%
- Departs 20:2533 flights12.3%
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 20:54 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and DL 493 runs 7 points better at 77.2%. 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 493 next to ATL to DEN
Every carrier on ATL to DEN combined arrived on time 78.0% of the time across 5,594 flights, so DL 493 is about level with it. Delta flew 2,807 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 81.1%, which this flight trails by 4 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 493thin sample | 269 | 77.2% | 50 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DEN | 2,807 | 79.0% | 52 min | 1.21% | B |
| All carriers on ATL–DEN | 5,594 | 78.0% | 61 min | 1.11% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 493 quarter by quarter
DL 493 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 85.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 68.8%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 54 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 flights80.0%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights73.6%
- Jan–Mar 202648 flights85.1%
- Apr–Jun 202668 flights79.1%
- Jul–Sep 202632 flights68.8%
Scale runs 60% to 90%.
By weekday, DL 493 did best on Wednesday at 91.4% on time and worst on Sunday at 67.4%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 24 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 493 runs when it is late
The 61 late arrivals split 25 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 18 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early63 flights23.6%
- Within 15 min143 flights53.6%
- 15–29 min late25 flights9.4%
- 30–59 min late18 flights6.7%
- 1–2 hours late13 flights4.9%
- 2+ hours late5 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 267 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 55 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. In the other direction, 19 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 DEN.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 493
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 December 2025, 2 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across December, August, March, July and January, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 December 2025 | 2 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 August 2026 | 2 hours 37 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 15 March 2026 | 2 hours 34 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 July 2026 | 2 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 January 2026 | 2 hours 14 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 493 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 3,038 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,112 of the 3,038 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,038 delay minutes reported on DL 493.
Cancellations are rare at 0.37%, 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
6.7% 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 about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,199 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.
The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including MCO to ATL (4) and BOS to ATL (3), but none flew often enough under DL 493 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to DEN only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 269 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 493
For a booking, read DL 493 as 77.2% on time with 0.37% cancelled over 269 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 519 on the same route66.7%
- United Airlines 235 on the same route78.5%
- Delta Air Lines 746 on the same route67.8%
- Delta Air Lines 706 on the same route84.7%
- Frontier Airlines 3293 on the same route81.2%
- Delta Air Lines 530 on the same route80.5%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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 ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.