Flight number record

DL 886

Delta Air Lines · Tucson to Atlanta

Route: TUS → ATL
Departs: 06:00
Flights: 365
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 886, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 886 earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 19 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.8 hours. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 886's record is 19 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 194 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

96.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights

Avg delay

168 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.82%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

1.7%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 886 flies

DL 886 flies TUS to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 260 of 365 flights, with 07:00 (69 flights) next.

Departs 06:00260 flights71.2%
Departs 07:0069 flights18.9%

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 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 886 runs 7 points better at 96.7%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

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Against the route

DL 886 next to TUS to ATL

Every carrier on TUS to ATL combined arrived on time 91.4% of the time across 809 flights, so DL 886 is 5 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 16 points.

DL 886 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 886	365	96.7%	168 min	0.82%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on TUS–ATL	809	91.4%	121 min	1.73%	A
All carriers on TUS–ATL	809	91.4%	121 min	1.73%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 886 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 886 held fairly steady: 100.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 96.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 94.3% in Jan–Mar 2026, 97.8% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 96.8% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202530 flights100.0%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights96.7%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights94.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights97.8%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights96.8%

Scale runs 85% to 100%.

By weekday, DL 886 ranged from 92.3% on Monday to 100.0% on Friday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 886 runs when it is late

DL 886 often beats the schedule: 164 of 362 completed flights, 45%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 12 late arrivals split 2 under half an hour, 4 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 6 an hour or more.

15+ min early164 flights45.3%
Within 15 min186 flights51.4%
15–29 min late2 flights0.6%
30–59 min late4 flights1.1%
1–2 hours late0 flights0.0%
2+ hours late6 flights1.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 362 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Only 16 of 362 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 886

The latest arrival of the period was on 26 March 2026, 7 hours 42 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of DL 886 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
26 March 2026	7 hours 42 minutes	Carrier
8 August 2026	7 hours 13 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
9 February 2026	6 hours 19 minutes	Carrier
30 November 2025	3 hours 51 minutes	Carrier
16 February 2026	3 hours 19 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why DL 886 runs late

Carrier accounts for 65% of the 2,021 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
65%
Late-arriving aircraft
21%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,318 of the 2,021 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,021 delay minutes reported on DL 886.

Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 1,541 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

Every one of the 365 flights under DL 886 in the data flew TUS to ATL. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 886

For a booking, DL 886 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 96.7% on time and 0.82% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures