Flight number record
DL 969
Delta Air Lines · New York to Atlanta
- Route
- LGA → ATL
- Departs
- 16:00
- Flights
- 323
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 969, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 969 draws a C−. About 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 323 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 969 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 97 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 309 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.33%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
13.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 323 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 969 flies
DL 969 is scheduled to leave New York (LGA) at 16:00 local time and reach Atlanta (ATL) at 18:43. That slot held for 308 of the 323 scheduled departures in the data, so the figures below describe one steady operation rather than a number that moved around the clock.
- Departs 16:00308 flights95.4%
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 16:00 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and DL 969 runs 4 points worse at 67.6%. 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 969 next to LGA to ATL
Every carrier on LGA to ATL combined arrived on time 75.5% of the time across 8,500 flights, so DL 969 is 8 points behind it. Delta flew 4,935 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 14 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 969thin sample | 323 | 67.6% | 72 min | 4.33% | C− |
| All Delta Air Lines on LGA–ATL | 4,935 | 79.1% | 73 min | 3.55% | B− |
| All carriers on LGA–ATL | 8,500 | 75.5% | 79 min | 4.36% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 969 quarter by quarter
DL 969 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 73.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 57.5%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 81 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 202526 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202577 flights57.5%
- Jan–Mar 202677 flights73.3%
- Apr–Jun 202686 flights66.7%
- Jul–Sep 202657 flights66.7%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 969 did best on Tuesday at 78.4% on time and worst on Monday at 58.8%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 969 runs when it is late
DL 969 often beats the schedule: 88 of 309 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 100 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 32 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 42 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early88 flights28.5%
- Within 15 min121 flights39.2%
- 15–29 min late26 flights8.4%
- 30–59 min late32 flights10.4%
- 1–2 hours late26 flights8.4%
- 2+ hours late16 flights5.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 309 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
29 of 105 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. In the other direction, 24 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 ATL.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 969
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 June 2026, 6 hours 38 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 June 2026 | 6 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 August 2026 | 5 hours 38 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 August 2026 | 5 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 December 2025 | 3 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 January 2026 | 3 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 969 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 7,201 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,201 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 43 to one. The split is drawn from 7,201 delay minutes reported on DL 969.
Cancellations run at 4.33%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
13.6% 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 762 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.
Every one of the 323 flights under DL 969 in the data flew LGA 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. 323 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 969
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 969: 4.33% of its 323 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to ATL, every carrier and departure
- ATL to LGA, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 550 on the same route89.4%
- Frontier Airlines 3287 on the same route60.8%
- Delta Air Lines 992 on the same route86.0%
- Delta Air Lines 968 on the same route74.1%
- Delta Air Lines 993 on the same route82.6%
- Delta Air Lines 974 on the same route79.6%
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.