Flight number record

DL 741

Delta Air Lines · Sacramento to Atlanta

Route: SMF → ATL
Departs: 07:00
Flights: 365
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 741, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 741 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 741's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 150 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

92.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.55%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

2.5%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.

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Schedule

When DL 741 flies

DL 741 flies SMF to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 191 of 365 flights, with 07:05 (96 flights) next.

Departs 07:00191 flights52.3%
Departs 07:0596 flights26.3%

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 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 741 runs 3 points better at 92.3%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

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Against the route

DL 741 next to SMF to ATL

Every carrier on SMF to ATL combined arrived on time 92.9% of the time across 1,007 flights, so DL 741 is about level with it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 11 points.

DL 741 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 741	365	92.3%	82 min	0.55%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on SMF–ATL	1,007	92.9%	93 min	1.39%	A
All carriers on SMF–ATL	1,007	92.9%	93 min	1.39%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 741 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 741 held fairly steady: 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 92.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 92.1% in Jan–Mar 2026, 94.5% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 87.1% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202530 flights96.7%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights92.3%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights92.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.5%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights87.1%

Scale runs 80% to 100%.

By weekday, DL 741 did best on Wednesday at 98.1% on time and worst on Friday at 84.6%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 741 runs when it is late

DL 741 often beats the schedule: 143 of 363 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 28 late arrivals split 10 under half an hour, 9 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 9 an hour or more.

15+ min early143 flights39.4%
Within 15 min192 flights52.9%
15–29 min late10 flights2.8%
30–59 min late9 flights2.5%
1–2 hours late3 flights0.8%
2+ hours late6 flights1.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 363 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 23 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 7 still arrived on time. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 741

The latest arrival of the period was on 17 March 2026, 7 hours 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 741 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
17 March 2026	7 hours	Carrier
15 December 2025	5 hours	Late-arriving aircraft
22 September 2025	4 hours 26 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
17 May 2026	2 hours 54 minutes	Carrier
14 March 2026	2 hours 24 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why DL 741 runs late

Carrier accounts for 57% of the 2,296 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
57%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
National Airspace System
18%

The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,314 of the 2,296 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,296 delay minutes reported on DL 741.

Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 2,092 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 741 in the data flew SMF to ATL. 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 741

For a booking, DL 741 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 92.3% on time and 0.55% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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