Flight number record

DL 516

Delta Air Lines · Dallas to Atlanta

Route: DAL → ATL
Departs: 06:00
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 516, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 516 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 516's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 105 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights

Avg delay

92 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.74%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 516 flies

DL 516 flies DAL to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 180 of 365 flights, with 06:05 (94 flights) and 05:45 (62 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:00180 flights49.3%
Departs 06:0594 flights25.8%
Departs 05:4562 flights17.0%

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 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 516 runs level with that at 88.1%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 516 next to DAL to ATL

Every carrier on DAL to ATL combined arrived on time 79.2% of the time across 3,398 flights, so DL 516 is 9 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,851 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 7 points.

DL 516 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 516	365	88.1%	92 min	2.74%	A
All Delta Air Lines on DAL–ATL	1,851	82.1%	90 min	2.11%	B
All carriers on DAL–ATL	3,398	79.2%	74 min	1.94%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 516 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 516 held fairly steady: 90.1% in Jul–Sep 2025, 88.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 89.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 84.7% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights90.1%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights88.0%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights89.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights84.7%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 516 did best on Thursday at 94.2% on time and worst on Saturday at 77.1%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 516 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 65% of the 3,874 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
65%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
10%
Late-arriving aircraft
7%

The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, 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 2,535 of the 3,874 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,874 delay minutes reported on DL 516.

Cancellations run at 2.74%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.4% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 721 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.

Every one of the 365 flights under DL 516 in the data flew DAL to ATL. 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. 365 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 516

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 516: 2.74% of its 365 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

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