Flight number record

DL 905

Delta Air Lines · Salt Lake City to Atlanta

Route: SLC → ATL
Departs: 17:55
Flights: 362
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 905, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 905 earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 362 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 905's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 361 completed flights

Avg delay

79 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.28%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

5.8%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 362 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 905 flies

DL 905 flies SLC to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:55, used on 116 of 362 flights, with 17:50 (79 flights) and 17:45 (73 flights) next.

Departs 17:55116 flights32.0%
Departs 17:5079 flights21.8%
Departs 17:4573 flights20.2%

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 17:55 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 905 runs 17 points better at 84.8%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

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Against the route

DL 905 next to SLC to ATL

Every carrier on SLC to ATL combined arrived on time 86.4% of the time across 2,974 flights, so DL 905 is 2 points behind it. Delta flew 2,968 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 86.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 4 points.

DL 905 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 905thin sample	362	84.8%	79 min	0.28%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on SLC–ATL	2,968	86.5%	65 min	0.57%	A+
All carriers on SLC–ATL	2,974	86.4%	67 min	0.57%	A+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,039,517	81.1%	71 min	1.74%	B

Across the year

DL 905 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 905 held fairly steady: 90.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 88.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 80.9% in Jan–Mar 2026, 85.7% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 80.3% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202530 flights90.0%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights88.9%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights80.9%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights85.7%
Jul–Sep 202661 flights80.3%

Scale runs 70% to 95%.

By weekday, DL 905 did best on Tuesday at 90.4% on time and worst on Wednesday at 76.9%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late DL 905 runs when it is late

DL 905 often beats the schedule: 187 of 361 completed flights, 52%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 55 late arrivals split 22 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 21 an hour or more.

15+ min early187 flights51.8%
Within 15 min119 flights33.0%
15–29 min late22 flights6.1%
30–59 min late12 flights3.3%
1–2 hours late10 flights2.8%
2+ hours late11 flights3.0%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 361 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 78 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 30 still arrived on time. Only 7 left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for DL 905

The latest arrival of the period was on 1 April 2026, 6 hours 56 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 905 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
1 April 2026	6 hours 56 minutes	Carrier
31 March 2026	5 hours 43 minutes	Carrier
15 March 2026	4 hours 15 minutes	Carrier
8 November 2025	4 hours 12 minutes	National Airspace System
8 April 2026	3 hours 39 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why DL 905 runs late

Carrier accounts for 54% of the 4,334 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
54%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,325 of the 4,334 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,334 delay minutes reported on DL 905.

Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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

5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,590 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 362 flights under DL 905 in the data flew SLC 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. 362 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 905

For a booking, read DL 905 as 84.8% on time with 0.28% cancelled over 362 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures