Flight number record

DL 537

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Washington

Route: ATL → DCA
Departs: 21:59
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 537, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 537 sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 537 runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 87 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 351 completed flights

Avg delay

54 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.57%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

9.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 537 flies

DL 537 flies ATL to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:59, used on 200 of 364 flights, with 21:55 (119 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:59200 flights54.9%
Departs 21:55119 flights32.7%

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 21:59 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 537 runs level with that at 68.9%. 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 537 next to ATL to DCA

Every carrier on ATL to DCA combined arrived on time 70.1% of the time across 6,812 flights, so DL 537 is about level with it. Delta flew 3,838 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 67.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 13 points.

DL 537 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 537thin sample	364	68.9%	54 min	3.57%	C−
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DCA	3,838	67.3%	60 min	2.58%	C
All carriers on ATL–DCA	6,812	70.1%	70 min	3.32%	C−
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 537 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 537 held fairly steady: 68.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 68.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 69.4% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 70.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 2 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights68.2%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights68.2%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights69.4%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights70.0%

Scale runs 60% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 537 did best on Tuesday at 80.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 61.2%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 537 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 5,842 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
34%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%
Extreme weather
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 2,192 of the 5,842 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,842 delay minutes reported on DL 537.

Cancellations run at 3.57%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 547 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 364 flights under DL 537 in the data flew ATL to DCA. 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. 364 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 537

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 537: 3.57% of its 364 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs roughly 55 minutes, 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