Flight number record

DL 986

Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Austin

Route: LAX → AUS
Departs: 10:30
Flights: 312
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 986, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 986 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 312 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 986's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 113 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 307 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.28%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 312 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 986 flies

DL 986 flies LAX to AUS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:30, used on 104 of 312 flights, with 12:25 (52 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:30104 flights33.3%
Departs 12:2552 flights16.7%

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 10:30 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 986 runs 5 points better at 88.9%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 986 next to LAX to AUS

Every carrier on LAX to AUS combined arrived on time 78.3% of the time across 4,076 flights, so DL 986 is 11 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,285 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 7 points.

DL 986 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 986thin sample	312	88.9%	55 min	1.28%	A
All Delta Air Lines on LAX–AUS	1,285	81.5%	73 min	1.09%	B
All carriers on LAX–AUS	4,076	78.3%	65 min	0.74%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 986 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 986 held fairly steady: 89.9% in Jul–Sep 2025, 90.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 90.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 83.3% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202590 flights89.9%
Oct–Dec 202578 flights90.8%
Jan–Mar 202684 flights90.2%
Apr–Jun 202660 flights83.3%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 986 did best on Wednesday at 93.3% on time and worst on Saturday at 78.0%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 986 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 67% of the 1,858 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.

Carrier
67%
National Airspace System
23%
Late-arriving aircraft
11%

The largest share of delay minutes, 67%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,237 of the 1,858 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,858 delay minutes reported on DL 986.

Cancellations sit at 1.28% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 1,242 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 AUS to LAX (71) and AUS to ATL (16), but none flew often enough under DL 986 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to LAX to AUS only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 312 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 986

For a booking, DL 986 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 88.9% on time and 1.28% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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