Flight number record

DL 796

Delta Air Lines · Phoenix to Atlanta

Route: PHX → ATL
Departs: 13:37
Flights: 356
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 796, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 796 lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 356 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

On time

80.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 352 completed flights

Avg delay

96 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.56%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 356 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 796 flies

DL 796 flies PHX to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 13:37, used on 61 of 356 flights, with 13:55 (60 flights) and 12:51 (57 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 13:3761 flights17.1%
Departs 13:5560 flights16.9%
Departs 12:5157 flights16.0%

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 13:37 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and DL 796 runs level with that at 80.4%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 796 next to PHX to ATL

Every carrier on PHX to ATL combined arrived on time 82.7% of the time across 3,764 flights, so DL 796 is 2 points behind it. Delta flew 2,303 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 87.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 796 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 796thin sample	356	80.4%	96 min	0.56%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on PHX–ATL	2,303	87.0%	97 min	0.91%	A+
All carriers on PHX–ATL	3,764	82.7%	75 min	0.72%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 796 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 796 held fairly steady: 83.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 79.1% in Oct–Dec 2025, 78.8% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 80.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202586 flights83.5%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights79.1%
Jan–Mar 202688 flights78.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights80.2%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 796 did best on Friday at 88.0% on time and worst on Monday at 73.1%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 796 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 6,596 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
53%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
0%

53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 6,596 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 6,596 delay minutes reported on DL 796.

Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, below the national 1.81% 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

7.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,587 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.

DL 796 is not only a PHX to ATL flight. It also flew ATL to PHX (339 flights, 80.6% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 356 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.

Other routes flown as DL 796
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
ATL to PHXthin sample	339	80.6%	69 min	0.88%	B+

What to do with this

Booking DL 796

For a booking, read DL 796 as 80.4% on time with 0.56% cancelled over 356 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures