Flight number record
DL 846
Delta Air Lines · New York to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- LGA → DFW
- Departs
- 15:00
- Flights
- 338
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 846, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 846 draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 338 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 846 runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 145 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 317 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.14%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
12.3%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 338 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When DL 846 flies
DL 846 flies LGA to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:00, used on 55 of 338 flights, with 15:30 (45 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 15:0055 flights16.3%
- Departs 15:3045 flights13.3%
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 15:00 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 846 runs 9 points worse at 63.1%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
DL 846 next to LGA to DFW
Every carrier on LGA to DFW combined arrived on time 70.8% of the time across 6,782 flights, so DL 846 is 8 points behind it. Delta flew 1,955 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 71.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 18 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 846thin sample | 338 | 63.1% | 69 min | 4.14% | D− |
| All Delta Air Lines on LGA–DFW | 1,955 | 71.0% | 74 min | 4.35% | C− |
| All carriers on LGA–DFW | 6,782 | 70.8% | 86 min | 4.94% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 846 quarter by quarter
DL 846 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 73.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 41.3%, a swing of 32 points on roughly 85 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 202581 flights64.9%
- Oct–Dec 202580 flights41.3%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights73.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights70.9%
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 846 did best on Saturday at 79.4% on time and worst on Wednesday at 51.0%. Each day rests on about 48 flights, so a gap of 28 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 846 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 8,033 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.
- 45%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
45% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 3,627 minutes out of 8,033, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,033 delay minutes reported on DL 846.
Cancellations run at 4.14%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,389 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.
The same number turns up on three other city pairs in the data, including DFW to LGA (67), ATL to TLH (16) and TLH to ATL (16), but none flew often enough under DL 846 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to LGA to DFW only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 338 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 846
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 846: 4.14% of its 338 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to LGA, the return direction
- American Airlines 1987 on the same route82.6%
- Delta Air Lines 873 on the same route78.6%
- Frontier Airlines 3423 on the same route65.3%
- Delta Air Lines 860 on the same route60.1%
- American Airlines 1056 on the same route63.5%
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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.