Flight number record

DL 541

Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Washington

Route: SEA → IAD
Departs: 21:55
Flights: 349
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 541, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 541 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 349 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

On time

76.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.15%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

9.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 349 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 541 flies

DL 541 flies SEA to IAD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:55, used on 96 of 349 flights, with 15:20 (60 flights) and 15:55 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:5596 flights27.5%
Departs 15:2060 flights17.2%
Departs 15:5536 flights10.3%

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 21:55 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 541 runs 6 points better at 76.7%. 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 541 next to SEA to IAD

Every carrier on SEA to IAD combined arrived on time 81.9% of the time across 1,886 flights, so DL 541 is 5 points behind it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 5 points.

DL 541 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 541thin sample	349	76.7%	74 min	1.15%	B
All Delta Air Lines on SEA–IADthin sample	361	77.0%	75 min	1.11%	B
All carriers on SEA–IAD	1,886	81.9%	60 min	0.64%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 541 quarter by quarter

DL 541 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 83.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 71.1%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 87 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 flights75.0%
Oct–Dec 202580 flights77.2%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights71.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights83.3%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 541 did best on Wednesday at 86.0% on time and worst on Monday at 71.4%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 541 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 64% of the 5,937 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
64%
Late-arriving aircraft
19%
National Airspace System
10%
Extreme weather
7%

The largest share of delay minutes, 64%, 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 3,811 of the 5,937 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,937 delay minutes reported on DL 541.

Cancellations sit at 1.15% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.

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. 9.9% 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.

At 2,305 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.

The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including LGA to ATL (16), but none flew often enough under DL 541 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SEA to IAD only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 349 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 541

For a booking, DL 541 is one of the weaker ways to fly SEA to IAD: 5 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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