Flight number record

DL 987

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Boston

Route: ATL → BOS
Departs: 07:00
Flights: 329
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 987, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 987 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 329 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 987's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 122 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 322 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.13%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 329 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Schedule

When DL 987 flies

DL 987 flies ATL to BOS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 124 of 329 flights, with 07:25 (87 flights) and 07:10 (55 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:00124 flights37.7%
Departs 07:2587 flights26.4%
Departs 07:1055 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 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 987 runs level with that at 89.8%. 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 987 next to ATL to BOS

Every carrier on ATL to BOS combined arrived on time 74.5% of the time across 4,935 flights, so DL 987 is 15 points ahead of it. Delta flew 3,666 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

DL 987 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 987thin sample	329	89.8%	52 min	2.13%	A
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–BOS	3,666	76.2%	59 min	1.72%	B
All carriers on ATL–BOS	4,935	74.5%	63 min	1.95%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 987 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 987 held fairly steady: 92.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 88.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 86.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202567 flights92.5%
Oct–Dec 202581 flights88.8%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights86.9%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights91.2%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 987 ranged from 85.7% on Sunday to 93.5% on Saturday. With about 47 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 987 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 72% of the 1,705 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
72%
National Airspace System
23%
Late-arriving aircraft
4%
Extreme weather
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, 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 1,226 of the 1,705 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,705 delay minutes reported on DL 987.

Cancellations sit at 2.13% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.5% 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 946 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 329 flights under DL 987 in the data flew ATL to BOS. 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. 329 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 987

For a booking, read DL 987 as 89.8% on time with 2.13% cancelled over 329 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