Flight number record
DL 997
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to New York
- Route
- ATL → LGA
- Departs
- 17:00
- Flights
- 349
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 997 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 102 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 325 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.44%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
15.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 349 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 212 of 349 flights, with 16:30 (105 flights) next.
- Departs 17:00212 flights60.7%
- Departs 16:30105 flights30.1%
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 17:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 997 runs level with that at 67.1%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
DL 997 next to ATL to LGA
Every carrier on ATL to LGA combined arrived on time 72.3% of the time across 8,502 flights, so DL 997 is 5 points behind it. Delta flew 4,937 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 14 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 997thin sample | 349 | 67.1% | 80 min | 5.44% | C− |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–LGA | 4,937 | 75.9% | 66 min | 3.48% | B− |
| All carriers on ATL–LGA | 8,502 | 72.3% | 79 min | 4.34% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 997 quarter by quarter
DL 997 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 83.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 57.1%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 70 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 202530 flights83.3%
- Oct–Dec 202580 flights57.1%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights77.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights65.9%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights58.5%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
By weekday, DL 997 did best on Saturday at 84.8% on time and worst on Thursday at 58.7%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 26 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 997 runs when it is late
The 107 late arrivals split 32 under half an hour, 26 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 49 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early69 flights21.2%
- Within 15 min149 flights45.8%
- 15–29 min late32 flights9.8%
- 30–59 min late26 flights8.0%
- 1–2 hours late29 flights8.9%
- 2+ hours late20 flights6.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 325 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
17 of 110 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 997
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 August 2026, 6 hours 36 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 August 2026 | 6 hours 36 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 11 August 2026 | 5 hours 7 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 5 August 2026 | 4 hours 52 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 July 2026 | 4 hours 49 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 14 December 2025 | 4 hours 42 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 997 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 57% of the 8,515 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
57% 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 4,828 minutes out of 8,515, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,515 delay minutes reported on DL 997.
Cancellations run at 5.44%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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
15.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
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: 5.44% 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.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to LGA, every carrier and departure
- LGA to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 520 on the same route69.5%
- Frontier Airlines 3288 on the same route36.9%
- Delta Air Lines 513 on the same route87.7%
- Delta Air Lines 371 on the same route84.7%
- Delta Air Lines 434 on the same route62.1%
- Delta Air Lines 460 on the same route76.3%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.