Flight number record
DL 873
Delta Air Lines · New York to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- LGA → DFW
- Departs
- 09:15
- Flights
- 353
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 873, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 873 lands a B−, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 353 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 332 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.53%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
9.3%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 353 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 873 flies
DL 873 flies LGA to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:15, used on 60 of 353 flights, with 08:25 (58 flights) and 08:00 (54 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 09:1560 flights17.0%
- Departs 08:2558 flights16.4%
- Departs 08:0054 flights15.3%
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 09:15 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 873 runs 6 points worse at 78.6%. 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 873 next to LGA to DFW
Every carrier on LGA to DFW combined arrived on time 70.8% of the time across 6,782 flights, so DL 873 is 8 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,955 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 71.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 3 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 873thin sample | 353 | 78.6% | 60 min | 4.53% | B− |
| All Delta Air Lines on LGA–DFW | 1,955 | 71.0% | 74 min | 4.35% | C− |
| All carriers on LGA–DFW | 6,782 | 70.8% | 86 min | 4.94% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 873 quarter by quarter
DL 873 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 89.9% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 68.2%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 88 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 flights89.9%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights68.2%
- Jan–Mar 202687 flights75.3%
- Apr–Jun 202682 flights80.8%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 873 ranged from 75.0% on Saturday to 82.0% on Friday. With about 50 flights behind each day, a spread of 7 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why DL 873 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 64% of the 4,279 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.
- 64%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 4%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 64%, 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 2,756 of the 4,279 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,279 delay minutes reported on DL 873.
Cancellations run at 4.53%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.3% 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 DFW to LGA (160), but none flew often enough under DL 873 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to LGA to DFW only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 353 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 873
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 873: 4.53% of its 353 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to LGA, the return direction
- American Airlines 1987 on the same route82.6%
- Delta Air Lines 846 on the same route63.1%
- Frontier Airlines 3423 on the same route65.3%
- Delta Air Lines 860 on the same route60.1%
- American Airlines 1056 on the same route63.5%
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.