Flight number record

DL 853

Delta Air Lines · Anchorage to Seattle

Route: ANC → SEA
Departs: 06:00
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 853, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 853 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.2 hours. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 853's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 122 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights

Avg delay

131 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.82%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 853 flies

DL 853 flies ANC to SEA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 198 of 365 flights, with 05:55 (56 flights) and 05:45 (40 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:00198 flights54.2%
Departs 05:5556 flights15.3%
Departs 05:4540 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 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 853 runs level with that at 89.8%. 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 853 next to ANC to SEA

Every carrier on ANC to SEA combined arrived on time 85.5% of the time across 6,681 flights, so DL 853 is 4 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,630 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 89.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

DL 853 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 853	365	89.8%	131 min	0.82%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on ANC–SEA	1,630	89.1%	105 min	0.67%	A+
All carriers on ANC–SEA	6,681	85.5%	64 min	1.12%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 853 quarter by quarter

DL 853 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 94.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 83.5%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 91 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 flights94.6%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights83.5%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights86.4%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.5%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 853 ranged from 82.7% on Monday to 94.2% on Wednesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 12 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 853 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 4,854 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
45%
Extreme weather
24%
Late-arriving aircraft
21%
National Airspace System
10%

Extreme weather accounts for 24% 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 3.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,854 delay minutes reported on DL 853.

Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% 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 1,448 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.

Every one of the 365 flights under DL 853 in the data flew ANC to SEA. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

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.

What to do with this

Booking DL 853

For a booking, DL 853 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 89.8% on time and 0.82% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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