Flight number record

DL 826

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Santa Ana

Route: ATL → SNA
Departs: 17:59
Flights: 329
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 826, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 826 lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 329 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

On time

76.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 323 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.61%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 329 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 826 flies

DL 826 flies ATL to SNA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:59, used on 59 of 329 flights, with 20:51 (55 flights) and 17:45 (49 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:5959 flights17.9%
Departs 20:5155 flights16.7%
Departs 17:4549 flights14.9%

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 17:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 826 runs 8 points better at 76.2%. 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 826 next to ATL to SNA

Every carrier on ATL to SNA combined arrived on time 75.4% of the time across 1,047 flights, so DL 826 is about level with it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 5 points.

DL 826 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 826thin sample	329	76.2%	57 min	0.61%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–SNA	1,047	75.4%	52 min	0.96%	B+
All carriers on ATL–SNA	1,047	75.4%	52 min	0.96%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 826 quarter by quarter

DL 826 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 83.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 69.6%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 82 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 flights69.6%
Oct–Dec 202560 flights78.0%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights83.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights74.7%

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

By weekday, DL 826 did best on Saturday at 89.6% on time and worst on Monday at 68.0%. Each day rests on about 47 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 826 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 60% of the 4,357 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.

Carrier
60%
National Airspace System
21%
Late-arriving aircraft
14%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,618 of the 4,357 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,357 delay minutes reported on DL 826.

Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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

6.8% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,919 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 two other city pairs in the data, including SNA to ATL (34) and MEM to ATL (11), but none flew often enough under DL 826 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to SNA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 329 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 826

For a booking, read DL 826 as 76.2% on time with 0.61% cancelled over 329 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