Flight number record

DL 998

Delta Air Lines · San Antonio to Atlanta

Route: SAT → ATL
Departs: 08:00
Flights: 284
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 998, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 998 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 284 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 998's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 153 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

92.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 281 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.70%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 284 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 998 flies

DL 998 flies SAT to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:00, used on 223 of 284 flights, with 07:55 (31 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:00223 flights78.5%
Departs 07:5531 flights10.9%

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 08:00 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 998 runs 9 points better at 92.9%. 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 998 next to SAT to ATL

Every carrier on SAT to ATL combined arrived on time 86.1% of the time across 3,026 flights, so DL 998 is 7 points ahead of it. Delta flew 2,609 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 87.8% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 11 points.

DL 998 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 998thin sample	284	92.9%	78 min	0.70%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on SAT–ATL	2,609	87.8%	75 min	1.76%	A
All carriers on SAT–ATL	3,026	86.1%	72 min	1.55%	A
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 998 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 998 held fairly steady: 92.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 97.4% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 91.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights92.3%
Oct–Dec 202577 flights97.4%
Jan–Mar 202624 flights—
Apr–Jun 202691 flights91.0%

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 998 ranged from 89.7% on Saturday to 100.0% on Friday. With about 41 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 998 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 80% of the 1,558 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
80%
National Airspace System
20%

The largest share of delay minutes, 80%, 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 1,239 of the 1,558 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,558 delay minutes reported on DL 998.

Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, 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 2.1% 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.

The 874 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 two other city pairs in the data, including MIA to BOS (62) and BOS to MIA (4), but none flew often enough under DL 998 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SAT to ATL only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 284 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 998

For a booking, DL 998 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 92.9% on time and 0.70% 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