Flight number record
DL 743
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Sacramento
- Route
- ATL → SMF
- Departs
- 17:59
- Flights
- 303
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 743, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 743 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 303 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
74.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 301 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.66%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
8.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 303 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 743 flies
DL 743 flies ATL to SMF without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:59, used on 106 of 303 flights, with 18:00 (34 flights) next.
- Departs 17:59106 flights35.0%
- Departs 18:0034 flights11.2%
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 17:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 743 runs 6 points better at 74.4%. 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 743 next to ATL to SMF
Every carrier on ATL to SMF combined arrived on time 82.3% of the time across 1,007 flights, so DL 743 is 8 points behind it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 743thin sample | 303 | 74.4% | 56 min | 0.66% | C+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–SMF | 1,007 | 82.3% | 55 min | 1.19% | B |
| All carriers on ATL–SMF | 1,007 | 82.3% | 55 min | 1.19% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 743 quarter by quarter
DL 743 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 89.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 61.3%, a swing of 28 points on roughly 76 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 202517 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202570 flights76.8%
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights89.0%
- Apr–Jun 202680 flights68.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights61.3%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 743 did best on Monday at 83.3% on time and worst on Sunday at 64.4%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 743 runs when it is late
DL 743 often beats the schedule: 81 of 301 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 77 late arrivals split 33 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 26 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early81 flights26.9%
- Within 15 min143 flights47.5%
- 15–29 min late33 flights11.0%
- 30–59 min late18 flights6.0%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights6.6%
- 2+ hours late6 flights2.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 301 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 67 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 7 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 17 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 SMF.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 743
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 April 2026, 5 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across April, June, July and December, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 April 2026 | 5 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 June 2026 | 3 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 July 2026 | 3 hours 10 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 3 July 2026 | 2 hours 55 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 29 December 2025 | 2 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 743 runs late
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 4,292 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,292 delay minutes reported on DL 743.
Cancellations are rare at 0.66%, 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
8.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 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.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including SMF to ATL (41), but none flew often enough under DL 743 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to SMF only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 303 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 743
For a booking, DL 743 is one of the weaker ways to fly ATL to SMF: 8 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.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to SMF, every carrier and departure
- SMF to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 904 on the same route89.6%
- Delta Air Lines 682 on the same route81.5%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) 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
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.