Flight number record
DL 839
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- ATL → DFW
- Departs
- 07:25
- Flights
- 353
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 839, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 839 lands a B−, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 35 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 353 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Key figures
On time
78.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 338 completed flights
Avg delay
36 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.68%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
2.1%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 353 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Schedule
When DL 839 flies
DL 839 flies ATL to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:25, used on 267 of 353 flights, with 07:30 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 07:25267 flights75.6%
- Departs 07:3041 flights11.6%
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 07:25 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 839 runs 11 points worse at 78.4%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
Against the route
DL 839 next to ATL to DFW
Every carrier on ATL to DFW combined arrived on time 74.3% of the time across 6,698 flights, so DL 839 is 4 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,791 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 3 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 839thin sample | 353 | 78.4% | 36 min | 3.68% | B− |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DFW | 2,791 | 75.4% | 57 min | 2.51% | B |
| All carriers on ATL–DFW | 6,698 | 74.3% | 80 min | 2.76% | C |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 839 quarter by quarter
DL 839 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 89.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 70.8%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 88 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 flights70.8%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights74.4%
- Jan–Mar 202682 flights89.6%
- Apr–Jun 202687 flights80.5%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 839 did best on Tuesday at 90.4% on time and worst on Saturday at 69.4%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 839 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 59% of the 2,653 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.
- 59%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 3%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,653 delay minutes reported on DL 839.
Cancellations run at 3.68%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.
The 731 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 839 is not only a ATL to DFW flight. It also flew DFW to ATL (350 flights, 82.5% 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. 353 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DFW to ATLthin sample | 350 | 82.5% | 57 min | 3.43% | B− |
What to do with this
Booking DL 839
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 839: 3.68% of its 353 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs roughly 35 minutes, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to ATL, the return direction
- American Airlines 1567 on the same route86.3%
- Delta Air Lines 921 on the same route74.4%
- Delta Air Lines 961 on the same route87.6%
- Delta Air Lines 818 on the same route78.9%
- Delta Air Lines 31 on the same route64.6%
- Delta Air Lines 414 on the same route81.2%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.