Flight number record

DL 493

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Denver

Route: ATL → DEN
Departs: 21:10
Flights: 299
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 493, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 493 sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 299 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

On time

75.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 297 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.33%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

8.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 299 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When DL 493 flies

DL 493 flies ATL to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:10, used on 39 of 299 flights, with 20:25 (33 flights) and 21:37 (32 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:1039 flights13.0%
Departs 20:2533 flights11.0%
Departs 21:3732 flights10.7%

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 21:10 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 493 runs 5 points better at 75.4%. 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 493 next to ATL to DEN

Every carrier on ATL to DEN combined arrived on time 77.6% of the time across 5,589 flights, so DL 493 is 2 points behind it. Delta flew 2,805 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 6 points.

DL 493 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 493thin sample	299	75.4%	53 min	0.33%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DEN	2,805	78.1%	52 min	1.11%	B
All carriers on ATL–DEN	5,589	77.6%	60 min	1.02%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	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 2025 at 69.6%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 75 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 202592 flights69.6%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights73.6%
Jan–Mar 202648 flights85.1%
Apr–Jun 202668 flights79.1%

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

By weekday, DL 493 did best on Friday at 87.0% on time and worst on Thursday at 68.2%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

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 3,889 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
National Airspace System
27%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 1,531 of the 3,889 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,889 delay minutes reported on DL 493.

Cancellations are rare at 0.33%, below the national 1.81% 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

8.4% 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 roughly 55 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including 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. 299 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 75.4% on time with 0.33% cancelled over 299 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