Flight number record

DL 652

Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Atlanta

Route: SEA → ATL
Departs: 23:59
Flights: 348
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 652, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 652 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 652's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 117 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 345 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.57%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

2.0%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 348 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.

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Schedule

When DL 652 flies

DL 652 flies SEA to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 23:59, used on 86 of 348 flights, with 23:00 (41 flights) and 23:35 (39 flights) next.

Departs 23:5986 flights24.7%
Departs 23:0041 flights11.8%
Departs 23:3539 flights11.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 23:59 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and DL 652 runs 19 points better at 89.0%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

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Against the route

DL 652 next to SEA to ATL

Every carrier on SEA to ATL combined arrived on time 84.0% of the time across 3,294 flights, so DL 652 is 5 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,402 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

DL 652 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 652thin sample	348	89.0%	55 min	0.57%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on SEA–ATL	2,402	84.2%	84 min	0.75%	B+
All carriers on SEA–ATL	3,294	84.0%	74 min	0.70%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 652 quarter by quarter

DL 652 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 93.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 80.0%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 70 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 202530 flights80.0%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights93.7%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights85.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights90.1%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights90.3%

Scale runs 70% to 100%.

By weekday, DL 652 did best on Saturday at 97.9% on time and worst on Friday at 77.6%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 652 runs when it is late

DL 652 often beats the schedule: 109 of 345 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 20 of the 38 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 7 reached an hour or more.

15+ min early109 flights31.6%
Within 15 min198 flights57.4%
15–29 min late20 flights5.8%
30–59 min late11 flights3.2%
1–2 hours late5 flights1.4%
2+ hours late2 flights0.6%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 345 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 59 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 29 still arrived on time. 8 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 652

The latest arrival of the period was on 11 May 2026, 10 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across May, April and October, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of DL 652 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
11 May 2026	10 hours 29 minutes	Carrier
29 April 2026	2 hours 47 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
16 October 2025	1 hour 34 minutes	Carrier
3 April 2026	1 hour 21 minutes	National Airspace System
27 May 2026	1 hour 16 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why DL 652 runs late

Carrier accounts for 54% of the 2,104 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
54%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
National Airspace System
10%

36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,104 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 to one. The split is drawn from 2,104 delay minutes reported on DL 652.

Cancellations are rare at 0.57%, below the national 1.89% 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 LGA to DFW (16) and DFW to LGA (16), but none flew often enough under DL 652 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. 348 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 652

For a booking, DL 652 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 89.0% on time and 0.57% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures