Flight number record

DL 727

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Washington

Route: ATL → DCA
Departs: 19:59
Flights: 350
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 54.5% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 23 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average about an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 350 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 727 runs 23 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 231 extra late arrivals.

On time

54.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 334 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.29%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

9.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 350 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When DL 727 flies

DL 727 flies ATL to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:59, used on 165 of 350 flights, with 19:55 (118 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 19:59165 flights47.1%
Departs 19:55118 flights33.7%

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 19:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 727 runs 14 points worse at 54.5%. 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 727 next to ATL to DCA

Every carrier on ATL to DCA combined arrived on time 70.1% of the time across 6,812 flights, so DL 727 is 16 points behind it. Delta flew 3,838 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 67.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 27 points.

DL 727 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 727thin sample	350	54.5%	59 min	2.29%	F
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DCA	3,838	67.3%	60 min	2.58%	C
All carriers on ATL–DCA	6,812	70.1%	70 min	3.32%	C−
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	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 Jan–Mar 2026 at 47.0%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 88 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 202581 flights54.5%
Oct–Dec 202589 flights51.2%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights47.0%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights64.8%

Scale runs 40% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 727 did best on Saturday at 75.0% on time and worst on Thursday at 42.9%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 32 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

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 9,003 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
38%
Carrier
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
16%
Extreme weather
10%

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,212 of the 9,003 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,003 delay minutes reported on DL 727.

Cancellations sit at 2.29% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 2.29%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

Every one of the 350 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. 350 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, DL 727 is one of the weaker ways to fly ATL to DCA: 16 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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