Flight number record

DL 656

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to San Francisco

Route: ATL → SFO
Departs: 21:59
Flights: 267
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 656, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 656 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 267 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 656 runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 55 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 262 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.50%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

6.9%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 267 flights between September 2025 and August 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.

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Schedule

When DL 656 flies

DL 656 flies ATL to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:59, used on 68 of 267 flights, with 22:40 (46 flights) and 21:00 (38 flights) next.

Departs 21:5968 flights25.5%
Departs 22:4046 flights17.2%
Departs 21:0038 flights14.2%

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 21:59 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and DL 656 runs level with that at 71.8%. 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 656 next to ATL to SFO

Every carrier on ATL to SFO combined arrived on time 69.9% of the time across 3,339 flights, so DL 656 is 2 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,393 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 68.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 9 points.

DL 656 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 656thin sample	267	71.8%	53 min	1.50%	C
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–SFO	2,393	68.5%	55 min	0.67%	C+
All carriers on ATL–SFO	3,339	69.9%	58 min	0.69%	C+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 656 quarter by quarter

DL 656 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 75.6% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 64.0%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 67 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 202512 flights—
Oct–Dec 202579 flights71.1%
Jan–Mar 202680 flights75.6%
Apr–Jun 202650 flights64.0%
Jul–Sep 202646 flights69.6%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 656 did best on Thursday at 77.6% on time and worst on Sunday at 56.5%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 656 runs when it is late

The 74 late arrivals split 29 under half an hour, 27 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 18 an hour or more.

15+ min early46 flights17.6%
Within 15 min142 flights54.2%
15–29 min late29 flights11.1%
30–59 min late27 flights10.3%
1–2 hours late15 flights5.7%
2+ hours late3 flights1.1%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 262 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

15 of 64 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. In the other direction, 25 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SFO.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 656

The latest arrival of the period was on 19 October 2025, 12 hours 44 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of DL 656 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
19 October 2025	12 hours 44 minutes	Carrier
14 June 2026	2 hours 28 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
19 July 2026	2 hours	Carrier
22 May 2026	1 hour 50 minutes	Carrier
2 January 2026	1 hour 32 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why DL 656 runs late

Carrier accounts for 51% of the 3,934 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
51%
National Airspace System
32%
Late-arriving aircraft
16%
Extreme weather
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,993 of the 3,934 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,934 delay minutes reported on DL 656.

Cancellations sit at 1.50% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.37%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

6.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 2,139 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 PNS to ATL (19) and DTW to GSP (1), but none flew often enough under DL 656 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to SFO only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 267 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 656

For a booking, read DL 656 as 71.8% on time with 1.50% cancelled over 267 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures