Flight number record
DL 918
Delta Air Lines · Phoenix to Atlanta
- Route
- PHX → 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 918, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 918 earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 17 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 918's record is 17 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 174 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
94.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights
Avg delay
124 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 918 flies
DL 918 flies PHX to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 182 of 365 flights, with 05:45 (141 flights) next.
- Departs 06:00182 flights49.9%
- Departs 05:45141 flights38.6%
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 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 918 runs 5 points better at 94.7%. 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 918 next to PHX to ATL
Every carrier on PHX to ATL combined arrived on time 80.7% of the time across 3,696 flights, so DL 918 is 14 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,283 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 85.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 14 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 918 | 365 | 94.7% | 124 min | 1.37% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on PHX–ATL | 2,283 | 85.4% | 102 min | 1.01% | A |
| All carriers on PHX–ATL | 3,696 | 80.7% | 78 min | 0.87% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 918 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 918 held fairly steady: 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 94.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 97.8% in Jan–Mar 2026, 94.5% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 90.2% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights94.4%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights97.8%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.5%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights90.2%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 918 ranged from 92.3% on Thursday to 96.2% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 4 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 918 runs when it is late
DL 918 often beats the schedule: 158 of 360 completed flights, 44%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 19 late arrivals split 7 under half an hour, 3 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 9 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early158 flights43.9%
- Within 15 min183 flights50.8%
- 15–29 min late7 flights1.9%
- 30–59 min late3 flights0.8%
- 1–2 hours late2 flights0.6%
- 2+ hours late7 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 360 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
6 of 23 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. Only 2 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 918
The latest arrival of the period was on 31 August 2026, 9 hours 32 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 31 August 2026 | 9 hours 32 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 20 May 2026 | 5 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 May 2026 | 4 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 December 2025 | 3 hours 40 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 3 April 2026 | 3 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 918 runs late
Carrier accounts for 64% of the 2,355 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 64%Carrier
- 24%Extreme weather
- 12%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 24% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 4.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,355 delay minutes reported on DL 918.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.89%, 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 8.3% 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 1,587 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 918 in the data flew PHX 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 918
For a booking, DL 918 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 94.7% on time and 1.37% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to ATL, every carrier and departure
- ATL to PHX, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 929 on the same route83.9%
- Delta Air Lines 901 on the same route89.4%
- Delta Air Lines 796 on the same route78.5%
- Delta Air Lines 348 on the same route82.0%
- American Airlines 2391 on the same route70.0%
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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 ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.