Flight number record

DL 820

Delta Air Lines · Washington to Salt Lake City

Route: DCA → SLC
Departs: 17:10
Flights: 364
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 820, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 820 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 820 runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 45 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

8.3%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Schedule

When DL 820 flies

DL 820 flies DCA to SLC without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:10, used on 142 of 364 flights, with 17:59 (59 flights) next.

Departs 17:10142 flights39.0%
Departs 17:5959 flights16.2%

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 17:10 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 820 runs 5 points better at 72.8%. 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 820 next to DCA to SLC

Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 8 points.

DL 820 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 820thin sample	364	72.8%	63 min	1.10%	C
All Delta Air Lines on DCA–SLCthin sample	364	72.8%	63 min	1.10%	C
All carriers on DCA–SLCthin sample	364	72.8%	63 min	1.10%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 820 quarter by quarter

DL 820 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 82.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 67.8%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 73 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 202530 flights76.7%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights82.6%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights67.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights69.2%
Jul–Sep 202661 flights68.3%

Scale runs 60% to 90%.

By weekday, DL 820 did best on Saturday at 81.6% on time and worst on Wednesday at 61.5%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 820 runs when it is late

The 98 late arrivals split 44 under half an hour, 24 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 30 an hour or more.

15+ min early56 flights15.6%
Within 15 min206 flights57.2%
15–29 min late44 flights12.2%
30–59 min late24 flights6.7%
1–2 hours late18 flights5.0%
2+ hours late12 flights3.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 360 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

18 of 78 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. In the other direction, 38 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 SLC.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 820

The latest arrival of the period was on 12 June 2026, 8 hours 31 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.

The latest arrivals of DL 820 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
12 June 2026	8 hours 31 minutes	Carrier
6 August 2026	6 hours 7 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
9 July 2026	5 hours 12 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
6 September 2025	4 hours 33 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
2 August 2026	4 hours 29 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why DL 820 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 6,195 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
35%
National Airspace System
35%
Carrier
28%
Extreme weather
2%

35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,195 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 to one. The split is drawn from 6,195 delay minutes reported on DL 820.

Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

8.3% 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 1,851 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 820 is not only a DCA to SLC flight. It also flew SLC to DCA (364 flights, 83.9% 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. 364 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 820
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SLC to DCAthin sample	364	83.9%	38 min	0.82%	B+

What to do with this

Booking DL 820

For a booking, read DL 820 as 72.8% on time with 1.10% cancelled over 364 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures