Flight number record

DL 898

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Los Angeles

Route: ATL → LAX
Departs: 08:05
Flights: 365
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 898, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 898 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 898's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 117 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights

Avg delay

49 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.27%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

2.8%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Schedule

When DL 898 flies

DL 898 flies ATL to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:05, used on 140 of 365 flights, with 08:55 (136 flights) and 08:15 (57 flights) next.

Departs 08:05140 flights38.4%
Departs 08:55136 flights37.3%
Departs 08:1557 flights15.6%

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 08:05 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 898 runs 5 points better at 89.0%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Against the route

DL 898 next to ATL to LAX

Every carrier on ATL to LAX combined arrived on time 77.8% of the time across 4,851 flights, so DL 898 is 11 points ahead of it. Delta flew 3,817 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

DL 898 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 898	365	89.0%	49 min	0.27%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–LAX	3,817	79.1%	57 min	0.73%	B+
All carriers on ATL–LAX	4,851	77.8%	65 min	0.82%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 898 quarter by quarter

DL 898 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 98.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 80.2%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 73 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 flights93.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights80.2%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights88.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights90.1%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights98.4%

Scale runs 70% to 100%.

By weekday, DL 898 did best on Thursday at 94.2% on time and worst on Monday at 79.2%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 898 runs when it is late

DL 898 often beats the schedule: 105 of 363 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 40 late arrivals split 19 under half an hour, 11 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more.

15+ min early105 flights28.9%
Within 15 min218 flights60.1%
15–29 min late19 flights5.2%
30–59 min late11 flights3.0%
1–2 hours late8 flights2.2%
2+ hours late2 flights0.6%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 363 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 30 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 11 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 21 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 LAX.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 898

The latest arrival of the period was on 26 January 2026, 3 hours 53 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 898 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
26 January 2026	3 hours 53 minutes	Carrier
23 May 2026	2 hours 45 minutes	Carrier
29 December 2025	1 hour 56 minutes	Carrier
7 March 2026	1 hour 55 minutes	Extreme weather
2 January 2026	1 hour 33 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why DL 898 runs late

Carrier accounts for 49% of the 1,947 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
49%
National Airspace System
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
7%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 960 of the 1,947 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,947 delay minutes reported on DL 898.

Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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 2.8% 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 1,947 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 898 in the data flew ATL to LAX. 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 898

For a booking, DL 898 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 89.0% on time and 0.27% 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