Flight number record

DL 990

Delta Air Lines · New York to Atlanta

Route: LGA → ATL
Departs: 12:00
Flights: 337
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 990, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 990 lands a B−, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 337 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 990's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 322 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.15%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 337 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 990 flies

DL 990 flies LGA to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:00, used on 184 of 337 flights, with 11:59 (137 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 12:00184 flights54.6%
Departs 11:59137 flights40.7%

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 12:00 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and DL 990 runs 5 points better at 83.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 990 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 990 is 7 points ahead of 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 beats by 2 points.

DL 990 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 990thin sample	337	83.5%	68 min	4.15%	B−
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 990 quarter by quarter

DL 990 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 88.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 72.5%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 84 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 202591 flights87.5%
Oct–Dec 202582 flights72.5%
Jan–Mar 202678 flights88.6%
Apr–Jun 202686 flights85.7%

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 990 did best on Friday at 92.2% on time and worst on Thursday at 78.4%. Each day rests on about 48 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 990 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 3,596 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
35%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Carrier
32%
Security
1%

35% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,251 minutes out of 3,596, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,596 delay minutes reported on DL 990.

Cancellations run at 4.15%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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

5.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

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.

Every one of the 337 flights under DL 990 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. 337 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 990

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 990: 4.15% of its 337 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

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