Flight number record
DL 850
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Washington
- Route
- ATL → DCA
- Departs
- 15:30
- Flights
- 348
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 850, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 850 earns an F, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 54.7% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 23 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average about an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 850 runs 23 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 226 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
54.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 340 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.44%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
13.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 348 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 850 flies
DL 850 flies ATL to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:30, used on 81 of 348 flights, with 15:17 (69 flights) and 15:35 (48 flights) next.
- Departs 15:3081 flights23.3%
- Departs 15:1769 flights19.8%
- Departs 15:3548 flights13.8%
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 15:30 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and DL 850 runs 17 points worse at 54.7%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
DL 850 next to ATL to DCA
Every carrier on ATL to DCA combined arrived on time 68.7% of the time across 6,798 flights, so DL 850 is 14 points behind it. Delta flew 3,850 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 66.7% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 26 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 850thin sample | 348 | 54.7% | 59 min | 1.44% | F |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DCA | 3,850 | 66.7% | 60 min | 2.44% | C |
| All carriers on ATL–DCA | 6,798 | 68.7% | 70 min | 3.43% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 850 quarter by quarter
DL 850 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 63.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 47.4%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 70 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 flights63.3%
- Oct–Dec 202580 flights55.7%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights50.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights59.6%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights47.4%
Scale runs 40% to 70%.
By weekday, DL 850 did best on Saturday at 66.7% on time and worst on Sunday at 47.8%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 850 runs when it is late
The 154 late arrivals split 58 under half an hour, 50 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 46 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early23 flights6.8%
- Within 15 min163 flights47.9%
- 15–29 min late58 flights17.1%
- 30–59 min late50 flights14.7%
- 1–2 hours late26 flights7.6%
- 2+ hours late20 flights5.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 340 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 116 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 43 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 DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 850
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 June 2026, 5 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across June, November and July, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 June 2026 | 5 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 November 2025 | 4 hours 46 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 9 July 2026 | 4 hours 30 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 25 November 2025 | 4 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 June 2026 | 3 hours 45 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 850 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 59% of the 9,144 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 59%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
59% 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 5,431 minutes out of 9,144, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,144 delay minutes reported on DL 850.
Cancellations sit at 1.44% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.86%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
13.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 547 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.
DL 850 is not only a ATL to DCA flight. It also flew DCA to ATL (347 flights, 63.4% 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. 348 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DCA to ATLthin sample | 347 | 63.4% | 89 min | 2.31% | D |
What to do with this
Booking DL 850
For a booking, DL 850 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 13.5% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to DCA, every carrier and departure
- DCA to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 360 on the same route69.7%
- Delta Air Lines 537 on the same route67.3%
- Delta Air Lines 380 on the same route80.4%
- Delta Air Lines 325 on the same route58.3%
- Delta Air Lines 926 on the same route84.1%
- Delta Air Lines 727 on the same route53.3%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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 ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.