Flight number record

DL 974

Delta Air Lines · New York to Atlanta

Route: LGA → ATL
Departs: 15:00
Flights: 347
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 974, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 974 lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 347 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

On time

79.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 338 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.31%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 347 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When DL 974 flies

DL 974 flies LGA to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:00, used on 236 of 347 flights, with 14:59 (95 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:00236 flights68.0%
Departs 14:5995 flights27.4%

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 15:00 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 974 runs 7 points better at 79.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 974 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 974 is 3 points ahead of 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 2 points.

DL 974 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 974thin sample	347	79.6%	86 min	2.31%	B
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 974 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 974 held fairly steady: 78.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 75.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 82.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 81.7% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202586 flights78.8%
Oct–Dec 202588 flights75.3%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.6%
Apr–Jun 202683 flights81.7%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 974 did best on Wednesday at 92.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 68.0%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 24 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 974 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 5,935 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
23%
Extreme weather
1%

41% 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 5,935 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 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 5,935 delay minutes reported on DL 974.

Cancellations sit at 2.31% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.7% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 347 flights under DL 974 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. 347 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 974

For a booking, read DL 974 as 79.6% on time with 2.31% cancelled over 347 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