Flight number record

DL 838

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to West Palm Beach

Route: ATL → PBI
Departs: 13:59
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 838, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 838 lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 365 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

On time

78.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 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 838 flies

DL 838 flies ATL to PBI without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 13:59, used on 137 of 365 flights. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 13:59137 flights37.5%

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 13:59 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and DL 838 runs level with that at 78.3%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 838 next to ATL to PBI

Every carrier on ATL to PBI combined arrived on time 75.7% of the time across 3,826 flights, so DL 838 is 3 points ahead of it. Delta flew 3,737 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 3 points.

DL 838 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 838	365	78.3%	57 min	1.10%	B
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–PBI	3,737	76.3%	52 min	1.53%	B
All carriers on ATL–PBI	3,826	75.7%	54 min	1.52%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 838 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 838 held fairly steady: 78.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 82.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 76.7% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 75.8% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights78.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights82.4%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights76.7%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights75.8%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 838 did best on Wednesday at 88.5% on time and worst on Sunday at 69.4%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 838 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 4,474 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
47%
National Airspace System
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
14%
Extreme weather
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, 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 2,107 of the 4,474 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,474 delay minutes reported on DL 838.

Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.8% 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.

The 545 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

DL 838 is not only a ATL to PBI flight. It also flew PBI to ATL (361 flights, 74.6% 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. 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 838
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
PBI to ATLthin sample	361	74.6%	63 min	2.22%	C

What to do with this

Booking DL 838

For a booking, read DL 838 as 78.3% on time with 1.10% 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