Flight number record

DL 697

Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to New York

Route: SLC → JFK
Departs: 17:25
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 697, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 697 lands a B, 3 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 13 minutes early.

On time

80.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.64%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 697 flies

DL 697 flies SLC to JFK without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:25, used on 88 of 365 flights, with 17:10 (65 flights) and 17:26 (60 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:2588 flights24.1%
Departs 17:1065 flights17.8%
Departs 17:2660 flights16.4%

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 17:25 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 697 runs 12 points better at 80.2%. 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 697 next to SLC to JFK

Every carrier on SLC to JFK combined arrived on time 82.0% of the time across 1,931 flights, so DL 697 is 2 points behind it. Delta flew 1,538 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 697 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 697	365	80.2%	67 min	1.64%	B
All Delta Air Lines on SLC–JFK	1,538	83.5%	68 min	1.63%	B
All carriers on SLC–JFK	1,931	82.0%	76 min	1.92%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 697 quarter by quarter

DL 697 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 84.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 72.8%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 91 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 flights72.8%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights84.6%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights81.3%

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

By weekday, DL 697 ranged from 75.5% on Sunday to 84.3% on Friday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 697 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 4,737 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
45%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
4%

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 4,737 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 4,737 delay minutes reported on DL 697.

Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.5% 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 1,990 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 697 in the data flew SLC to JFK. 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 697

For a booking, read DL 697 as 80.2% on time with 1.64% 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