Flight number record
DL 996
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Los Angeles
- Route
- ATL → LAX
- Departs
- 07:00
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 996's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 113 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 361 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.3%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 145 of 363 flights, with 07:25 (111 flights) and 07:15 (57 flights) next.
- Departs 07:00145 flights39.9%
- Departs 07:25111 flights30.6%
- Departs 07:1557 flights15.7%
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 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 88.6%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
DL 996 next to ATL to LAX
Every carrier on ATL to LAX combined arrived on time 77.8% of the time across 4,851 flights, so DL 996 is 11 points ahead of it. Delta flew 3,817 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 996thin sample | 363 | 88.6% | 67 min | 0.28% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–LAX | 3,817 | 79.1% | 57 min | 0.73% | B+ |
| All carriers on ATL–LAX | 4,851 | 77.8% | 65 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 996 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 996 held fairly steady: 90.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 92.1% in Oct–Dec 2025, 84.3% in Jan–Mar 2026, 86.8% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 91.9% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights92.1%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights84.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights91.9%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 996 did best on Saturday at 96.1% on time and worst on Sunday at 80.8%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 996 runs when it is late
DL 996 often beats the schedule: 131 of 361 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 41 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 11 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early131 flights36.3%
- Within 15 min189 flights52.4%
- 15–29 min late18 flights5.0%
- 30–59 min late11 flights3.0%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 361 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
11 of 40 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 996
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 July 2026, 8 hours 22 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 July 2026 | 8 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 January 2026 | 4 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 February 2026 | 3 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 January 2026 | 2 hours 57 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 31 October 2025 | 2 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 996 runs late
Carrier accounts for 72% of the 2,754 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 72%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 6%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,986 of the 2,754 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,754 delay minutes reported on DL 996.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, below the national 1.89% 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 3.3% 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.
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: 88.6% on time and 0.28% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 895 on the same route87.6%
- Delta Air Lines 898 on the same route89.0%
- Delta Air Lines 501 on the same route85.0%
- Delta Air Lines 500 on the same route74.0%
- Delta Air Lines 753 on the same route82.4%
- Frontier Airlines 4315 on the same route73.8%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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.