Flight number record
DL 946
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Austin
- Route
- LAX → AUS
- Departs
- 06:30
- Flights
- 341
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 946, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 946 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 341 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 946's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 104 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 334 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.76%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
5.7%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 341 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 946 flies
DL 946 flies LAX to AUS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:30, used on 90 of 341 flights, with 07:35 (79 flights) and 06:15 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 06:3090 flights26.4%
- Departs 07:3579 flights23.2%
- Departs 06:1541 flights12.0%
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 06:30 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 946 runs level with that at 88.0%. 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 946 next to LAX to AUS
Every carrier on LAX to AUS combined arrived on time 78.3% of the time across 4,076 flights, so DL 946 is 10 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,285 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 946thin sample | 341 | 88.0% | 105 min | 1.76% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on LAX–AUS | 1,285 | 81.5% | 73 min | 1.09% | B |
| All carriers on LAX–AUS | 4,076 | 78.3% | 65 min | 0.74% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 946 quarter by quarter
DL 946 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 94.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 82.6%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 85 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 202592 flights94.4%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights82.6%
- Jan–Mar 202666 flights84.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights89.7%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 946 did best on Tuesday at 93.8% on time and worst on Monday at 81.6%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 946 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 86% of the 4,208 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.
- 86%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 86%, 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 3,603 of the 4,208 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,208 delay minutes reported on DL 946.
Cancellations sit at 1.76% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
5.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,242 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including AUS to LAX (115) and RSW to DTW (24), but none flew often enough under DL 946 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to LAX to AUS only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 341 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 946
For a booking, read DL 946 as 88.0% on time with 1.76% cancelled over 341 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to AUS, every carrier and departure
- AUS to LAX, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 622 on the same route76.8%
- Delta Air Lines 986 on the same route88.9%
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.