Flight number record

DL 904

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Sacramento

Route: ATL → SMF
Departs: 09:05
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 904, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 904 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 904's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 109 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights

Avg delay

43 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.19%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Schedule

When DL 904 flies

DL 904 flies ATL to SMF without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:05, used on 99 of 365 flights, with 09:00 (76 flights) and 09:20 (45 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 09:0599 flights27.1%
Departs 09:0076 flights20.8%
Departs 09:2045 flights12.3%

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 09:05 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 904 runs 4 points better at 88.5%. 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 904 next to ATL to SMF

Every carrier on ATL to SMF combined arrived on time 82.4% of the time across 1,009 flights, so DL 904 is 6 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 7 points.

DL 904 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 904	365	88.5%	43 min	2.19%	A
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–SMF	1,009	82.4%	53 min	1.29%	B
All carriers on ATL–SMF	1,009	82.4%	53 min	1.29%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 904 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 904 held fairly steady: 88.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 87.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 87.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91.1% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights88.0%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights87.6%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights87.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights91.1%

Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 904 ranged from 84.0% on Saturday to 94.2% on Thursday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 904 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 60% of the 1,779 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.

Carrier
60%
National Airspace System
25%
Late-arriving aircraft
11%
Extreme weather
5%

The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, 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 1,060 of the 1,779 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,779 delay minutes reported on DL 904.

Cancellations sit at 2.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 2,092 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.

DL 904 is not only a ATL to SMF flight. It also flew SMF to ATL (364 flights, 90.9% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.

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.

Other routes flown as DL 904
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SMF to ATLthin sample	364	90.9%	89 min	2.20%	A

What to do with this

Booking DL 904

For a booking, read DL 904 as 88.5% on time with 2.19% cancelled over 365 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures