Flight number record

DL 654

Delta Air Lines · San Jose to Atlanta

Route: SJC → ATL
Departs: 06:35
Flights: 361
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 654, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 654 earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 361 flights, with a median arrival 17 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 654's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 162 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

93.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 356 completed flights

Avg delay

90 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.39%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

1.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 361 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 17 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 654 flies

DL 654 flies SJC to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:35, used on 123 of 361 flights, with 06:30 (66 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:35123 flights34.1%
Departs 06:3066 flights18.3%

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 06:35 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 654 runs 5 points better at 93.8%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 654 next to SJC to ATL

Every carrier on SJC to ATL combined arrived on time 93.1% of the time across 900 flights, so DL 654 is about level with it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 12 points.

DL 654 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 654thin sample	361	93.8%	90 min	1.39%	A
All Delta Air Lines on SJC–ATL	900	93.1%	69 min	1.33%	A
All carriers on SJC–ATL	900	93.1%	69 min	1.33%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 654 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 654 held fairly steady: 93.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 96.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 89.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 95.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights93.4%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights96.7%
Jan–Mar 202687 flights89.5%
Apr–Jun 202690 flights95.5%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 654 ranged from 90.6% on Tuesday to 96.2% on Thursday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 6 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 654 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 1,989 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
42%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
11%

Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,989 delay minutes reported on DL 654.

Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.7% 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 2,116 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 ATL to SJC (60), but none flew often enough under DL 654 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SJC to ATL only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 361 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 654

For a booking, DL 654 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 93.8% on time and 1.39% 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures