Flight number record

DL 878

Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to New York

Route: DFW → LGA
Departs: 11:35
Flights: 268
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 878, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 878 lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 268 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

On time

77.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 253 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.22%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 268 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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.

Schedule

When DL 878 flies

DL 878 flies DFW to LGA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:35, used on 53 of 268 flights, with 09:40 (45 flights) and 11:15 (31 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 11:3553 flights19.8%
Departs 09:4045 flights16.8%
Departs 11:1531 flights11.6%

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 11:35 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and DL 878 runs level with that at 77.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 878 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 878 is 10 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 73.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 4 points.

DL 878 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 878thin sample	268	77.5%	52 min	5.22%	B−
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 878 quarter by quarter

DL 878 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 86.8% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 62.1%, a swing of 25 points on roughly 67 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 202580 flights84.6%
Oct–Dec 202571 flights62.1%
Jan–Mar 202683 flights86.8%
Apr–Jun 202634 flights69.7%

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

By weekday, DL 878 did best on Tuesday at 81.0% on time and worst on Wednesday at 67.4%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 878 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 2,969 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
42%
National Airspace System
36%
Carrier
18%
Extreme weather
4%

42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 2,969 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 2,969 delay minutes reported on DL 878.

Cancellations run at 5.22%, against 1.81% 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

5.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 three other city pairs in the data, including LGA to DFW (228), SMF to ATL (21) and HSV to ATL (16), but none flew often enough under DL 878 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. 268 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 878

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 878: 5.22% of its 268 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs roughly 50 minutes, 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