Flight number record

DL 554

Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Atlanta

Route: SEA → ATL
Departs: 11:40
Flights: 302
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 554, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 554 lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 302 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.

On time

79.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 299 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.3%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 302 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Schedule

When DL 554 flies

DL 554 flies SEA to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:40, used on 74 of 302 flights, with 11:30 (72 flights) and 11:35 (51 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 11:4074 flights24.5%
Departs 11:3072 flights23.8%
Departs 11:3551 flights16.9%

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 11:40 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and DL 554 runs level with that at 79.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 554 next to SEA to ATL

Every carrier on SEA to ATL combined arrived on time 82.8% of the time across 3,276 flights, so DL 554 is 3 points behind it. Delta flew 2,371 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.8% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 2 points.

DL 554 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 554thin sample	302	79.6%	53 min	0.00%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on SEA–ATL	2,371	83.8%	86 min	0.51%	B+
All carriers on SEA–ATL	3,276	82.8%	73 min	0.55%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 554 quarter by quarter

DL 554 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 86.7% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 74.7%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 101 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 flights86.7%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights76.7%
Jan–Mar 202628 flights—
Apr–Jun 202691 flights74.7%

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

By weekday, DL 554 did best on Thursday at 85.7% on time and worst on Sunday at 70.5%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 554 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 3,251 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
7%

36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 3,251 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 3,251 delay minutes reported on DL 554.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 2,182 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 two other city pairs in the data, including ATL to AGS (26) and BWI to ATL (24), but none flew often enough under DL 554 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SEA to ATL only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 302 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 554

For a booking, read DL 554 as 79.6% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 302 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