Flight number record
DL 975
Delta Air Lines · New York to Atlanta
- Route
- LGA → ATL
- Departs
- 20:30
- Flights
- 296
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 975, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 975 draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 296 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 975 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 111 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 275 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.09%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
13.8%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 296 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% 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 975 flies
DL 975 flies LGA to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:30, used on 172 of 296 flights, with 20:00 (105 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 20:30172 flights58.1%
- Departs 20:00105 flights35.5%
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 20:30 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 975 runs 4 points worse at 66.5%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
DL 975 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 975 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.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 975thin sample | 296 | 66.5% | 93 min | 7.09% | 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 975 quarter by quarter
DL 975 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 76.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 53.1%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 74 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 202578 flights65.8%
- Oct–Dec 202568 flights53.1%
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights76.5%
- Apr–Jun 202676 flights70.0%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 975 did best on Wednesday at 75.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 57.5%. Each day rests on about 42 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 975 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 8,511 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
43% 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 8,511 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 43 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 8,511 delay minutes reported on DL 975.
Cancellations run at 7.09%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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. 13.8% 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.
The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including BTV to ATL (10) and ATL to BTV (10), but none flew often enough under DL 975 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to LGA to ATL only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 296 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 975
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 975: 7.09% of its 296 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, 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
- Frontier Airlines 3287 on the same route62.7%
- Delta Air Lines 550 on the same route89.8%
- Delta Air Lines 992 on the same route86.8%
- Delta Air Lines 968 on the same route74.3%
- Delta Air Lines 342 on the same route93.1%
- Delta Air Lines 993 on the same route84.0%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.