Flight number record

DL 959

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to West Palm Beach

Route: ATL → PBI
Departs: 16:52
Flights: 363
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 959, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 959 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 959 runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 51 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights

Avg delay

46 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 363 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Schedule

When DL 959 flies

DL 959 flies ATL to PBI without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:52, used on 96 of 363 flights, with 16:51 (47 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 16:5296 flights26.4%
Departs 16:5147 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 16:52 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 959 runs level with that at 72.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 959 next to ATL to PBI

Every carrier on ATL to PBI combined arrived on time 75.7% of the time across 3,826 flights, so DL 959 is 3 points behind it. Delta flew 3,737 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 9 points.

DL 959 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 959thin sample	363	72.5%	46 min	1.10%	C
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–PBI	3,737	76.3%	52 min	1.53%	B
All carriers on ATL–PBI	3,826	75.7%	54 min	1.52%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 959 quarter by quarter

DL 959 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 80.9% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 65.2%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 91 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 202591 flights68.9%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights75.3%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights65.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights80.9%

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 959 did best on Wednesday at 86.5% on time and worst on Sunday at 47.9%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 39 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 959 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 4,528 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
41%
National Airspace System
29%
Late-arriving aircraft
26%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 1,842 of the 4,528 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,528 delay minutes reported on DL 959.

Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

6.7% 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 roughly 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 545 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 one other city pair in the data, including PBI to ATL (233), but none flew often enough under DL 959 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to PBI only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 363 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 959

For a booking, read DL 959 as 72.5% on time with 1.10% cancelled over 363 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures