Flight number record
DL 950
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Washington
- Route
- ATL → DCA
- Departs
- 16:50
- Flights
- 356
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 356 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 950 runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 136 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 347 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.25%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
14.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 356 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 356 flights, with 16:40 (119 flights) and 16:53 (46 flights) next.
- Departs 16:50131 flights36.8%
- Departs 16:40119 flights33.4%
- Departs 16:5346 flights12.9%
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 16:50 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and DL 950 runs 8 points worse at 63.7%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
DL 950 next to ATL to DCA
Every carrier on ATL to DCA combined arrived on time 68.7% of the time across 6,798 flights, so DL 950 is 5 points behind it. Delta flew 3,850 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 66.7% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 17 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 950thin sample | 356 | 63.7% | 73 min | 2.25% | D |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DCA | 3,850 | 66.7% | 60 min | 2.44% | C |
| All carriers on ATL–DCA | 6,798 | 68.7% | 70 min | 3.43% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 950 quarter by quarter
DL 950 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 70.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 55.2%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 71 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 202530 flights70.0%
- Oct–Dec 202588 flights67.4%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights60.0%
- Apr–Jun 202688 flights67.0%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights55.2%
Scale runs 45% to 75%.
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.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 950 runs when it is late
The 126 late arrivals split 36 under half an hour, 40 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 50 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early45 flights13.0%
- Within 15 min176 flights50.7%
- 15–29 min late36 flights10.4%
- 30–59 min late40 flights11.5%
- 1–2 hours late29 flights8.4%
- 2+ hours late21 flights6.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 347 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 101 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 9 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 34 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 950
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 November 2025, 5 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 November 2025 | 5 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 May 2026 | 5 hours 5 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 11 August 2026 | 5 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 June 2026 | 4 hours 47 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 28 July 2026 | 4 hours 44 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 950 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 51% of the 9,144 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%National Airspace System
- 29%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
51% 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 4,681 minutes out of 9,144, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,144 delay minutes reported on DL 950.
Cancellations sit at 2.25% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
14.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including DCA to ATL (240), but none flew often enough under DL 950 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to DCA only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 356 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 950
For a booking, DL 950 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 14.4% 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 360 on the same route69.7%
- Delta Air Lines 537 on the same route67.3%
- Delta Air Lines 380 on the same route80.4%
- Delta Air Lines 325 on the same route58.3%
- Delta Air Lines 926 on the same route84.1%
- Delta Air Lines 727 on the same route53.3%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.