Flight number record
DL 853
Delta Air Lines · Anchorage to Seattle
- Route
- ANC → SEA
- Departs
- 06:00
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two 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 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 117 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights
Avg delay
124 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
4.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 204 of 365 flights, with 06:15 (65 flights) and 05:55 (56 flights) next.
- Departs 06:00204 flights55.9%
- Departs 06:1565 flights17.8%
- Departs 05:5556 flights15.3%
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 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 89.0%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
DL 853 next to ANC to SEA
Every carrier on ANC to SEA combined arrived on time 86.9% of the time across 6,616 flights, so DL 853 is 2 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,608 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 88.7% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 853 | 365 | 89.0% | 124 min | 0.82% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on ANC–SEA | 1,608 | 88.7% | 104 min | 0.68% | A+ |
| All carriers on ANC–SEA | 6,616 | 86.9% | 64 min | 0.85% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 853 quarter by quarter
DL 853 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 94.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 83.5%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 73 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 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights83.5%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights86.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.5%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights91.9%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 853 did best on Wednesday at 96.2% on time and worst on Monday at 81.1%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 853 runs when it is late
DL 853 often beats the schedule: 170 of 362 completed flights, 47%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 40 late arrivals split 15 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 15 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early170 flights47.0%
- Within 15 min152 flights42.0%
- 15–29 min late15 flights4.1%
- 30–59 min late10 flights2.8%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.4%
- 2+ hours late10 flights2.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 362 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
5 of 29 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 16 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 853
The latest arrival of the period was on 1 March 2026, 18 hours 3 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across March, October, September and November, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 March 2026 | 18 hours 3 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 23 October 2025 | 13 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 September 2025 | 6 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 November 2025 | 4 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 November 2025 | 4 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 853 runs late
Carrier accounts for 45% of the 4,968 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Carrier
- 23%Extreme weather
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 4,968 delay minutes reported on DL 853.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, below the national 1.89% 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 4.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
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: 89.0% on time and 0.82% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- ANC to SEA, every carrier and departure
- SEA to ANC, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 922 on the same route86.9%
- Delta Air Lines 925 on the same route90.9%
- Alaska Airlines 47 on the same route80.5%
- Alaska Airlines 48 on the same route89.6%
- Alaska Airlines 82 on the same route87.8%
- Alaska Airlines 54 on the same route87.5%
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.