Flight number record
DL 869
Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to New York
- Route
- DFW → LGA
- Departs
- 16:50
- Flights
- 275
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 275 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 869 runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 86 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 259 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.09%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
14.3%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 275 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 869 flies
DL 869 flies DFW to LGA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:50, used on 40 of 275 flights, with 16:15 (38 flights) and 16:10 (31 flights) next.
- Departs 16:5040 flights14.5%
- Departs 16:1538 flights13.8%
- Departs 16:1031 flights11.3%
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 16:50 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and DL 869 runs 3 points worse at 68.7%. 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 869 next to DFW to LGA
Every carrier on DFW to LGA combined arrived on time 66.1% of the time across 6,650 flights, so DL 869 is 3 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,851 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 72.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 12 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 869thin sample | 275 | 68.7% | 87 min | 5.09% | C− |
| All Delta Air Lines on DFW–LGA | 1,851 | 72.5% | 92 min | 5.24% | C− |
| All carriers on DFW–LGA | 6,650 | 66.1% | 76 min | 5.07% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | 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 69 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 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202586 flights62.0%
- Jan–Mar 202647 flights84.1%
- Apr–Jun 202650 flights64.0%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights64.9%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 869 did best on Wednesday at 75.7% on time and worst on Thursday at 58.8%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 869 runs when it is late
DL 869 often beats the schedule: 68 of 259 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 81 late arrivals split 20 under half an hour, 24 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early68 flights26.3%
- Within 15 min110 flights42.5%
- 15–29 min late20 flights7.7%
- 30–59 min late24 flights9.3%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights6.9%
- 2+ hours late19 flights7.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 259 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
14 of 82 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. In the other direction, 13 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 LGA.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 869
The latest arrival of the period was on 9 November 2025, 12 hours 58 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 9 November 2025 | 12 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 February 2026 | 7 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 June 2026 | 4 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 November 2025 | 3 hours 42 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 December 2025 | 3 hours 32 minutes | National Airspace System |
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 7,062 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,062 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 to one. The split is drawn from 7,062 delay minutes reported on DL 869.
Cancellations run at 5.09%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
14.3% 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 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.
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. 275 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: 5.09% of its 275 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.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to LGA, every carrier and departure
- LGA to DFW, the return direction
- Frontier Airlines 3424 on the same route58.7%
- American Airlines 1056 on the same route75.6%
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.