Flight number record

DL 820

Delta Air Lines · Washington to Salt Lake City

Route: DCA → SLC
Departs: 17:10
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 820 runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 44 extra late arrivals.

On time

73.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights

Avg delay

79 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.82%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

9.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

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 365 flights, with 17:59 (66 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:10142 flights38.9%
Departs 17:5966 flights18.1%

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 17:10 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 820 runs 5 points better at 73.2%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 820 next to DCA to SLC

Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 8 points.

DL 820 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 820	365	73.2%	79 min	0.82%	C+
All Delta Air Lines on DCA–SLC	365	73.2%	79 min	0.82%	C+
All carriers on DCA–SLC	365	73.2%	79 min	0.82%	C+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	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 91 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 202592 flights72.8%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights82.6%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights67.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights69.2%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 820 did best on Saturday at 80.4% on time and worst on Wednesday at 59.6%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

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 7,696 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
39%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
28%
Extreme weather
1%

39% 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 7,696 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 7,696 delay minutes reported on DL 820.

Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

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 (365 flights, 85.3% 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. 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.

Other routes flown as DL 820
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SLC to DCA	365	85.3%	42 min	0.82%	A+

What to do with this

Booking DL 820

For a booking, read DL 820 as 73.2% on time with 0.82% cancelled over 365 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