Flight number record

DL 996

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Los Angeles

Route: ATL → LAX
Departs: 07:00
Flights: 363
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 996, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 996 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 about an hour. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 996's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 116 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.55%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 363 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 996 flies

DL 996 flies ATL to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 178 of 363 flights, with 07:25 (111 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:00178 flights49.0%
Departs 07:25111 flights30.6%

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 996 runs level with that at 89.2%. 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 996 next to ATL to LAX

Every carrier on ATL to LAX combined arrived on time 78.4% of the time across 5,021 flights, so DL 996 is 11 points ahead of it. Delta flew 3,849 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

DL 996 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 996thin sample	363	89.2%	58 min	0.55%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–LAX	3,849	79.6%	55 min	0.75%	B+
All carriers on ATL–LAX	5,021	78.4%	63 min	0.86%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 996 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 996 held fairly steady: 93.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 92.1% in Oct–Dec 2025, 84.3% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 86.8% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights93.4%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights92.1%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights84.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.8%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 996 did best on Saturday at 96.1% on time and worst on Monday at 82.7%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 996 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 67% of the 2,244 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
26%
Late-arriving aircraft
7%
Extreme weather
1%

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 1,500 of the 2,244 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,244 delay minutes reported on DL 996.

Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.1% 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.

At 1,947 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including ATL to CVG (1) and CVG to ATL (1), but none flew often enough under DL 996 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to LAX only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 363 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 996

For a booking, DL 996 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 89.2% on time and 0.55% 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