Flight number record
DL 950
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Washington
- Route
- ATL → DCA
- Departs
- 16:50
- Flights
- 357
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 950, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 950 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 357 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 950 runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 151 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 349 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.96%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
15.2%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 357 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When DL 950 flies
DL 950 flies ATL to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:50, used on 131 of 357 flights, with 16:40 (72 flights) and 16:53 (46 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 16:50131 flights36.7%
- Departs 16:4072 flights20.2%
- Departs 16:5346 flights12.9%
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 16:50 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 950 runs 10 points worse at 62.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
DL 950 next to ATL to DCA
Every carrier on ATL to DCA combined arrived on time 70.1% of the time across 6,812 flights, so DL 950 is 8 points behind it. Delta flew 3,838 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 67.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 19 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 950thin sample | 357 | 62.5% | 73 min | 1.96% | D |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DCA | 3,838 | 67.3% | 60 min | 2.58% | C |
| All carriers on ATL–DCA | 6,812 | 70.1% | 70 min | 3.32% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 950 quarter by quarter
DL 950 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 67.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 55.6%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 89 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 flights55.6%
- Oct–Dec 202588 flights67.4%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights60.0%
- Apr–Jun 202688 flights67.0%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 950 did best on Wednesday at 68.0% on time and worst on Friday at 54.9%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 950 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 50% of the 9,556 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.
- 50%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
50% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 4,743 minutes out of 9,556, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,556 delay minutes reported on DL 950.
Cancellations sit at 1.96% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 547 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.
DL 950 is not only a ATL to DCA flight. It also flew DCA to ATL (261 flights, 69.3% 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. 357 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DCA to ATLthin sample | 261 | 69.3% | 94 min | 2.68% | C |
What to do with this
Booking DL 950
For a booking, DL 950 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 15.2% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to DCA, every carrier and departure
- DCA to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 737 on the same route81.1%
- Delta Air Lines 360 on the same route70.8%
- Delta Air Lines 380 on the same route79.7%
- Delta Air Lines 537 on the same route68.9%
- Delta Air Lines 926 on the same route83.3%
- Delta Air Lines 325 on the same route58.3%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.