Flight number record
DL 974
Delta Air Lines · New York to Atlanta
- Route
- LGA → ATL
- Departs
- 15:00
- Flights
- 349
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That rests on 349 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
79.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 339 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.58%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
9.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 349 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 237 of 349 flights, with 14:59 (95 flights) next.
- Departs 15:00237 flights67.9%
- Departs 14:5995 flights27.2%
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 15:00 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and DL 974 runs 8 points better at 79.6%. 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 974 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 974 is 4 points ahead of 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 2 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 974thin sample | 349 | 79.6% | 109 min | 2.58% | B |
| 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 974 quarter by quarter
DL 974 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 86.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 75.0%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 70 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 flights86.7%
- Oct–Dec 202588 flights75.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.6%
- Apr–Jun 202683 flights81.7%
- Jul–Sep 202658 flights75.0%
Scale runs 65% to 90%.
By weekday, DL 974 did best on Wednesday at 96.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 70.0%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 26 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 974 runs when it is late
DL 974 often beats the schedule: 139 of 339 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 69 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 33 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early139 flights41.0%
- Within 15 min131 flights38.6%
- 15–29 min late18 flights5.3%
- 30–59 min late18 flights5.3%
- 1–2 hours late11 flights3.2%
- 2+ hours late22 flights6.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 339 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 83 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 26 still arrived on time. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 974
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 June 2026, 8 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 June 2026 | 8 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 October 2025 | 6 hours 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 April 2026 | 6 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 August 2026 | 5 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 August 2026 | 5 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
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 7,544 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,544 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 to one. The split is drawn from 7,544 delay minutes reported on DL 974.
Cancellations run at 2.58%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
9.7% 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 349 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. 349 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, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 974: 2.58% of its 349 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs close to two hours, 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 342 on the same route93.1%
- 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.