Flight number record
DL 727
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Washington
- Route
- ATL → DCA
- Departs
- 19:55
- Flights
- 359
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 727, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 727 earns an F, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 53.3% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 24 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average roughly 50 minutes. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 359 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 727 runs 24 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 240 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
53.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 345 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.79%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
10.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 359 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 727 flies
DL 727 flies ATL to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:55, used on 150 of 359 flights, with 19:59 (143 flights) next.
- Departs 19:55150 flights41.8%
- Departs 19:59143 flights39.8%
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 19:55 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 727 runs 15 points worse at 53.3%. 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 727 next to ATL to DCA
Every carrier on ATL to DCA combined arrived on time 68.7% of the time across 6,798 flights, so DL 727 is 15 points behind it. Delta flew 3,850 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 66.7% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 28 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 727thin sample | 359 | 53.3% | 52 min | 2.79% | F |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DCA | 3,850 | 66.7% | 60 min | 2.44% | C |
| All carriers on ATL–DCA | 6,798 | 68.7% | 70 min | 3.43% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 727 quarter by quarter
DL 727 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 64.8% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 40.7%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 90 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 202529 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights51.2%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights47.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights64.8%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights40.7%
Scale runs 30% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 727 did best on Saturday at 72.9% on time and worst on Thursday at 42.0%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 31 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 727 runs when it is late
The 161 late arrivals split 64 under half an hour, 61 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 36 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early24 flights7.0%
- Within 15 min160 flights46.4%
- 15–29 min late64 flights18.6%
- 30–59 min late61 flights17.7%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights7.2%
- 2+ hours late11 flights3.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 345 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 112 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 7 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 56 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 DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 727
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 January 2026, 15 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across January, July, August and June, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 January 2026 | 15 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 July 2026 | 4 hours 13 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 January 2026 | 2 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 August 2026 | 2 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 June 2026 | 2 hours 36 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 727 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 8,353 reported delay minutes.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 41%Carrier
- 13%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,443 of the 8,353 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,353 delay minutes reported on DL 727.
Cancellations run at 2.79%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
10.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 547 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
Every one of the 359 flights under DL 727 in the data flew ATL to DCA. 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. 359 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 727
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 727: 2.79% of its 359 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs roughly 50 minutes, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to DCA, every carrier and departure
- DCA to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 360 on the same route69.7%
- Delta Air Lines 537 on the same route67.3%
- Delta Air Lines 380 on the same route80.4%
- Delta Air Lines 325 on the same route58.3%
- Delta Air Lines 926 on the same route84.1%
- Delta Air Lines 950 on the same route63.7%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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 ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.