Flight number record

DL 969

Delta Air Lines · New York to Atlanta

Route: LGA → ATL
Departs: 16:00
Flights: 325
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 325 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 969 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 113 extra late arrivals.

On time

66.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 315 completed flights

Avg delay

69 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.77%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

13.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 325 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.7% 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 969 flies

DL 969 is scheduled to leave New York (LGA) at 16:00 local time and reach Atlanta (ATL) at 18:48. That slot held for 310 of the 325 scheduled departures in the data, so the figures below describe one steady operation rather than a number that moved around the clock.

Departs 16:00310 flights95.4%

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 16:00 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 969 runs 6 points worse at 66.3%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 969 next to LGA to ATL

Every carrier on LGA to ATL combined arrived on time 76.6% of the time across 8,343 flights, so DL 969 is 10 points behind it. Delta flew 4,933 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 15 points.

DL 969 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 969thin sample	325	66.3%	69 min	2.77%	C
All Delta Air Lines on LGA–ATL	4,933	79.9%	73 min	2.98%	B
All carriers on LGA–ATL	8,343	76.6%	78 min	3.67%	B−
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	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 202585 flights67.5%
Oct–Dec 202577 flights57.5%
Jan–Mar 202677 flights73.3%
Apr–Jun 202686 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 77.4% on time and worst on Monday at 58.0%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 969 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 7,325 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
42%
National Airspace System
31%
Carrier
27%
Extreme weather
0%

42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 7,325 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 7,325 delay minutes reported on DL 969.

Cancellations run at 2.77%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.7% 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 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. 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.

Every one of the 325 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. 325 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: 2.77% of its 325 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.

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