Flight number record
DL 862
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Boston
- Route
- ATL → BOS
- Departs
- 11:10
- Flights
- 281
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 862, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 862 lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 281 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 862's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 278 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.07%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
6.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 281 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 862 flies
DL 862 flies ATL to BOS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:10, used on 67 of 281 flights, with 11:15 (45 flights) and 11:34 (33 flights) next.
- Departs 11:1067 flights23.8%
- Departs 11:1545 flights16.0%
- Departs 11:3433 flights11.7%
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 11:10 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and DL 862 runs 3 points better at 81.7%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
DL 862 next to ATL to BOS
Every carrier on ATL to BOS combined arrived on time 72.8% of the time across 5,054 flights, so DL 862 is 9 points ahead of it. Delta flew 3,731 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 862thin sample | 281 | 81.7% | 63 min | 1.07% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–BOS | 3,731 | 74.4% | 61 min | 1.82% | C |
| All carriers on ATL–BOS | 5,054 | 72.8% | 66 min | 2.30% | C |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 862 quarter by quarter
DL 862 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 94.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 73.3%, a swing of 21 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 flights73.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights79.1%
- Jan–Mar 202625 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202677 flights94.7%
- Jul–Sep 202657 flights73.7%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 862 did best on Saturday at 91.9% on time and worst on Thursday at 70.0%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 862 runs when it is late
The 51 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 18 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early68 flights24.5%
- Within 15 min159 flights57.2%
- 15–29 min late21 flights7.6%
- 30–59 min late12 flights4.3%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights3.6%
- 2+ hours late8 flights2.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 278 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 54 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 862
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 4 hours 27 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across December, July, October and March, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December 2025 | 4 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 July 2026 | 3 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 October 2025 | 3 hours 18 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 13 October 2025 | 3 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 3 hours | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 862 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 3,221 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 38%Carrier
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
40% 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 1,299 minutes out of 3,221, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,221 delay minutes reported on DL 862.
Cancellations sit at 1.07% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
6.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 946 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.
The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including MSY to LGA (55) and LGA to MSY (2), but none flew often enough under DL 862 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to BOS only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 281 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 862
For a booking, read DL 862 as 81.7% on time with 1.07% cancelled over 281 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to BOS, every carrier and departure
- BOS to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 855 on the same route85.2%
- Delta Air Lines 865 on the same route80.2%
- Delta Air Lines 726 on the same route66.3%
- Delta Air Lines 821 on the same route69.2%
- Delta Air Lines 987 on the same route89.9%
- Delta Air Lines 350 on the same route74.6%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) 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.