Flight number record
DL 739
Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Austin
- Route
- SEA → AUS
- Departs
- 07:20
- Flights
- 281
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 739, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 739 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 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 281 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 739's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 116 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 277 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.07%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
4.0%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 281 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 739 flies
DL 739 flies SEA to AUS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:20, used on 163 of 281 flights, with 07:15 (77 flights) and 07:23 (31 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 07:20163 flights58.0%
- Departs 07:1577 flights27.4%
- Departs 07:2331 flights11.0%
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 07:20 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 739 runs level with that at 89.2%. 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 739 next to SEA to AUS
Every carrier on SEA to AUS combined arrived on time 79.1% of the time across 2,059 flights, so DL 739 is 10 points ahead of it. Delta flew 936 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 739thin sample | 281 | 89.2% | 98 min | 1.07% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on SEA–AUS | 936 | 81.0% | 72 min | 1.28% | B |
| All carriers on SEA–AUS | 2,059 | 79.1% | 57 min | 0.97% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 739 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 739 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 89.6% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 85.4% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202579 flights89.6%
- Jan–Mar 202621 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202689 flights85.4%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 739 did best on Tuesday at 97.6% on time and worst on Friday at 82.1%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 739 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 81% of the 2,937 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.
- 81%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 4%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 81%, 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 2,385 of the 2,937 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,937 delay minutes reported on DL 739.
Cancellations sit at 1.07% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% 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 1,770 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 three other city pairs in the data, including SNA to MSP (32), ATL to PNS (12) and PNS to ATL (12), but none flew often enough under DL 739 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SEA to AUS only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 281 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 739
For a booking, DL 739 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 89.2% on time and 1.07% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to AUS, every carrier and departure
- AUS to SEA, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 831 on the same route79.8%
- Alaska Airlines 502 on the same route82.2%
- Alaska Airlines 352 on the same route79.5%
- Delta Air Lines 848 on the same route74.9%
- Alaska Airlines 372 on the same route71.0%
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.