Flight number record
DL 994
Delta Air Lines · New York to Atlanta
- Route
- LGA → ATL
- Departs
- 13:00
- Flights
- 325
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 994, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 994 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 325 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 994's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 55 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 319 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.54%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
6.0%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 325 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 994 flies
DL 994 flies LGA to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 13:00, used on 199 of 325 flights, with 12:59 (122 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 13:00199 flights61.2%
- Departs 12:59122 flights37.5%
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 13:00 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and DL 994 runs 4 points better at 83.1%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
DL 994 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 994 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.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 994thin sample | 325 | 83.1% | 59 min | 1.54% | 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 994 quarter by quarter
DL 994 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.7% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 73.7%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 81 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 202579 flights93.7%
- Oct–Dec 202578 flights73.7%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights81.9%
- Apr–Jun 202682 flights82.7%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 994 did best on Wednesday at 91.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 69.6%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 994 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 3,205 reported delay minutes.
- 35%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
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 1,130 minutes out of 3,205, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,205 delay minutes reported on DL 994.
Cancellations sit at 1.54% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.31%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
6.0% 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.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including LAS to SLC (16), but none flew often enough under DL 994 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. 325 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 994
For a booking, read DL 994 as 83.1% on time with 1.54% cancelled over 325 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
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
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.