Flight number record
DL 986
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Austin
- Route
- LAX → AUS
- Departs
- 12:25
- Flights
- 314
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 40 minutes. That rests on 314 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 986's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 98 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 310 completed flights
Avg delay
42 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.96%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 314 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
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Schedule
When DL 986 flies
DL 986 flies LAX to AUS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:25, used on 52 of 314 flights, with 10:30 (48 flights) and 10:20 (48 flights) next.
- Departs 12:2552 flights16.6%
- Departs 10:3048 flights15.3%
- Departs 10:2048 flights15.3%
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 12:25 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and DL 986 runs 9 points better at 87.1%. 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 986 next to LAX to AUS
Every carrier on LAX to AUS combined arrived on time 77.0% of the time across 4,077 flights, so DL 986 is 10 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,292 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 986thin sample | 314 | 87.1% | 42 min | 0.96% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on LAX–AUS | 1,292 | 80.9% | 66 min | 1.16% | B |
| All carriers on LAX–AUS | 4,077 | 77.0% | 62 min | 0.61% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 986 quarter by quarter
DL 986 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 77.4%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 63 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 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202578 flights90.8%
- Jan–Mar 202684 flights90.2%
- Apr–Jun 202660 flights83.3%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights77.4%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 986 did best on Tuesday at 91.3% on time and worst on Saturday at 78.0%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 986 runs when it is late
DL 986 often beats the schedule: 121 of 310 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 20 of the 40 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 8 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early121 flights39.0%
- Within 15 min149 flights48.1%
- 15–29 min late20 flights6.5%
- 30–59 min late12 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late7 flights2.3%
- 2+ hours late1 flights0.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 310 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 29 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. In the other direction, 19 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at AUS.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 986
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 March 2026, 2 hours 30 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 March 2026 | 2 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 March 2026 | 1 hour 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 December 2025 | 1 hour 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 November 2025 | 1 hour 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 April 2026 | 1 hour 33 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 986 runs late
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 1,675 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 39%National Airspace System
- 10%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 845 of the 1,675 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,675 delay minutes reported on DL 986.
Cancellations sit at 0.96% against a national 1.89%, 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 2.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including AUS to LAX (100) 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. 314 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: 87.1% on time and 0.96% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to AUS, every carrier and departure
- AUS to LAX, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 622 on the same route78.0%
- Delta Air Lines 946 on the same route87.7%
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.