Flight number record

DL 869

Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to New York

Route: DFW → LGA
Departs: 17:15
Flights: 271
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 869, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 869 sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 10 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 271 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 869 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 96 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 259 completed flights

Avg delay

98 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.06%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

15.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 271 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.1% 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 869 flies

DL 869 flies DFW to LGA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:15, used on 67 of 271 flights, with 16:50 (40 flights) and 16:15 (33 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:1567 flights24.7%
Departs 16:5040 flights14.8%
Departs 16:1533 flights12.2%

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 17:15 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 869 runs level with that at 68.0%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 869 next to DFW to LGA

Every carrier on DFW to LGA combined arrived on time 67.1% of the time across 6,786 flights, so DL 869 is about level with it. Delta flew 1,955 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 73.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 14 points.

DL 869 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 869thin sample	271	68.0%	98 min	4.06%	C−
All Delta Air Lines on DFW–LGA	1,955	73.4%	96 min	4.55%	C−
All carriers on DFW–LGA	6,786	67.1%	77 min	4.82%	C−
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 869 quarter by quarter

DL 869 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 84.1% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 62.0%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 68 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 202588 flights67.4%
Oct–Dec 202586 flights62.0%
Jan–Mar 202647 flights84.1%
Apr–Jun 202650 flights64.0%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 869 did best on Tuesday at 78.0% on time and worst on Thursday at 52.9%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 25 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 869 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 8,131 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
9%

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,031 of the 8,131 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,131 delay minutes reported on DL 869.

Cancellations run at 4.06%, 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. 15.1% 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 one other city pair in the data, including LGA to DFW (236), but none flew often enough under DL 869 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DFW to LGA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 271 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 869

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 869: 4.06% of its 271 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

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