Flight number record

DL 843

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to San Diego

Route: ATL → SAN
Departs: 14:05
Flights: 301
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 843, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 843 lands a B+, 3 points 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 about 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 301 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

On time

80.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 299 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.33%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 301 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Schedule

When DL 843 flies

DL 843 flies ATL to SAN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 14:05, used on 57 of 301 flights, with 14:40 (36 flights) and 13:40 (33 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 14:0557 flights18.9%
Departs 14:4036 flights12.0%
Departs 13:4033 flights11.0%

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 14:05 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 843 runs 9 points better at 80.9%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 843 next to ATL to SAN

Every carrier on ATL to SAN combined arrived on time 78.8% of the time across 2,413 flights, so DL 843 is 2 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,172 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, close to this flight's figure.

DL 843 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 843thin sample	301	80.9%	55 min	0.33%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–SAN	2,172	78.4%	48 min	0.69%	B+
All carriers on ATL–SAN	2,413	78.8%	47 min	0.62%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 843 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 843 held fairly steady: 83.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 80.0% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 75.3% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights83.7%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights80.0%
Jan–Mar 202628 flights—
Apr–Jun 202689 flights75.3%

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

By weekday, DL 843 did best on Wednesday at 88.4% on time and worst on Monday at 66.7%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 843 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 3,128 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
National Airspace System
27%
Extreme weather
4%

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 1,134 of the 3,128 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,128 delay minutes reported on DL 843.

Cancellations are rare at 0.33%, 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

6.4% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,892 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 DFW to SLC (62) and SLC to DFW (4), but none flew often enough under DL 843 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to SAN only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 301 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 843

For a booking, read DL 843 as 80.9% on time with 0.33% cancelled over 301 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