Flight number record

DL 653

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Salt Lake City

Route: ATL → SLC
Departs: 17:43
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 653, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 653 lands a B+, 4 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

On time

81.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 365 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 653 flies

DL 653 flies ATL to SLC without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:43, used on 103 of 365 flights, with 17:45 (71 flights) and 17:55 (61 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:43103 flights28.2%
Departs 17:4571 flights19.5%
Departs 17:5561 flights16.7%

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 17:43 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 653 runs 13 points better at 81.1%. 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 653 next to ATL to SLC

Every carrier on ATL to SLC combined arrived on time 83.0% of the time across 2,965 flights, so DL 653 is 2 points behind it. Delta flew 2,959 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 653 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 653	365	81.1%	58 min	0.00%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–SLC	2,959	83.0%	60 min	0.41%	B+
All carriers on ATL–SLC	2,965	83.0%	60 min	0.40%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 653 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 653 held fairly steady: 80.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 79.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 80.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 84.6% 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 flights80.4%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights79.3%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights80.0%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights84.6%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 653 did best on Wednesday at 96.2% on time and worst on Sunday at 73.1%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 23 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 653 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 3,978 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
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
26%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
12%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,978 delay minutes reported on DL 653.

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

7.4% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,590 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.

Every one of the 365 flights under DL 653 in the data flew ATL to SLC. 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 653

For a booking, read DL 653 as 81.1% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 365 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