Flight number record

DL 826

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Santa Ana

Route: ATL → SNA
Departs: 20:51
Flights: 329
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

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

DL 826 lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 40 minutes on average. That rests on 329 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

On time

80.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 323 completed flights

Avg delay

42 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.61%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

3.4%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 329 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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.

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Schedule

When DL 826 flies

DL 826 flies ATL to SNA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:51, used on 60 of 329 flights, with 17:45 (40 flights) and 18:05 (35 flights) next.

Departs 20:5160 flights18.2%
Departs 17:4540 flights12.2%
Departs 18:0535 flights10.6%

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 20:51 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and DL 826 runs 10 points better at 80.5%. 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 826 next to ATL to SNA

Every carrier on ATL to SNA combined arrived on time 76.0% of the time across 1,020 flights, so DL 826 is 5 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 826 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 826thin sample	329	80.5%	42 min	0.61%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–SNA	1,020	76.0%	51 min	0.88%	B+
All carriers on ATL–SNA	1,020	76.0%	51 min	0.88%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 826 quarter by quarter

DL 826 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 85.5% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 74.7%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 66 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 flights83.3%
Oct–Dec 202560 flights78.0%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights83.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights74.7%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights85.5%

Scale runs 65% to 90%.

By weekday, DL 826 did best on Saturday at 91.7% on time and worst on Wednesday at 75.6%. Each day rests on about 47 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 826 runs when it is late

The 63 late arrivals split 25 under half an hour, 27 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 11 an hour or more.

15+ min early77 flights23.8%
Within 15 min183 flights56.7%
15–29 min late25 flights7.7%
30–59 min late27 flights8.4%
1–2 hours late10 flights3.1%
2+ hours late1 flights0.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 323 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

15 of 61 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. 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 SNA.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 826

The latest arrival of the period was on 21 September 2025, 3 hours behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of DL 826 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
21 September 2025	3 hours	Carrier
28 April 2026	1 hour 57 minutes	Carrier
25 March 2026	1 hour 49 minutes	Carrier
10 November 2025	1 hour 46 minutes	Carrier
20 January 2026	1 hour 46 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why DL 826 runs late

Carrier accounts for 58% of the 2,669 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
58%
National Airspace System
22%
Late-arriving aircraft
17%
Security
3%
Extreme weather
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,544 of the 2,669 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,669 delay minutes reported on DL 826.

Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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 80.5% 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures