Flight number record

DL 997

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to New York

Route: ATL → LGA
Departs: 17:00
Flights: 349
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 997, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 997 draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 349 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 997 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 114 extra late arrivals.

On time

66.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 331 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.01%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

14.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 349 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When DL 997 flies

DL 997 flies ATL to LGA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:00, used on 206 of 349 flights, with 16:30 (111 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:00206 flights59.0%
Departs 16:30111 flights31.8%

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 17:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 997 runs 2 points worse at 66.2%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 997 next to ATL to LGA

Every carrier on ATL to LGA combined arrived on time 73.4% of the time across 8,344 flights, so DL 997 is 7 points behind it. Delta flew 4,936 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.7% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 15 points.

DL 997 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 997thin sample	349	66.2%	73 min	4.01%	C−
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–LGA	4,936	76.7%	66 min	2.96%	B
All carriers on ATL–LGA	8,344	73.4%	75 min	3.61%	C−
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 997 quarter by quarter

DL 997 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 77.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 57.1%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 87 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 202592 flights64.0%
Oct–Dec 202580 flights57.1%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights77.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights65.9%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 997 did best on Saturday at 83.3% on time and worst on Sunday at 60.0%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 23 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 997 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 59% of the 8,123 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.

National Airspace System
59%
Carrier
30%
Late-arriving aircraft
8%
Extreme weather
2%

59% 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 4,815 minutes out of 8,123, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,123 delay minutes reported on DL 997.

Cancellations run at 4.01%, 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

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 MIA to BOS (16), but none flew often enough under DL 997 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to LGA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 349 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 997

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 997: 4.01% of its 349 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over 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