Flight profile · Delta Air Lines
DL1217
Atlanta (ATL) to Fort Myers (RSW) · scheduled 10:54 PM – 12:36 AM
How DL1217 performs
820 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
DL1217 arrived on time 73.3% of the time, against 77.8% for all ATL → RSW flights, so this departure is 4.5 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Delta Air Lines’ own flights on this route it is 5.0 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 820 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If DL1217 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where DL1217 is right now
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL1217 | 73.3% | 1.71% | -2 min | 10.1% | 820 |
| Delta Air Lines on ATL → RSW | 78.3% | 1.41% | -4 min | 6.7% | 8,414 |
| All ATL → RSW flights | 77.8% | 1.43% | -4 min | 7.0% | 9,518 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why DL1217 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DL1217 on ATL → RSW. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies DL1217 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, DL1217 pushed back an average of 53 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 7 minutes late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into ATL just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 651 of 806 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late | Left 15+ late after a late inbound | Left 15+ late after an on-time inbound |
|---|---|---|---|
| DL1217 | 26% | 70% | 15% |
| Network, same turn | 17% | 68% | 9% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often DL1217’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often DL1217 left 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves ATL late, does that still matter by the time it reaches RSW?
DL1217 pushes back an average of 19.8 minutes late and reaches the gate at RSW an average of 14.7 minutes late. The 5.1 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 17.5 minutes on the taxiways at ATL, 1.0 minutes longer than a typical ATL departure in the same hour.
On arrival at RSW, DL1217 spends 5.2 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is about what any arrival at RSW spends on the ground before reaching the gate.
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached RSW. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 72,288 departures from ATL scheduled in the clock hour DL1217 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at RSW (107,489 flights), not just DL1217’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves ATL
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. DL1217 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 72,288 departures from ATL are scheduled in the 10 PM–11 PM hour over the period, against 1,012,247 across the whole day.
DL1217 is scheduled out of ATL at 10:54 PM, in the 10 PM–11 PM bank. Departures from ATL in that hour arrive on time 75.3% of the time against 78.7% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 3.4 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from ATL to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
Other routes DL1217 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
| Route | Operated | Flights | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| ATL→TLH Atlanta to Tallahassee | December 2, 2025 | 1 | — |
| TLH→ATL Tallahassee to Atlanta | December 2, 2025 | 1 | — |
| MSY→ATL New Orleans to Atlanta | July 7, 2025 – December 1, 2025 | 146 | 82.1% |
| ATL→MSY Atlanta to New Orleans | August 11, 2025 – December 1, 2025 | 111 | 87.4% |
| RSW→ATL Fort Myers to Atlanta | May 10, 2025 – June 7, 2025 | 5 | — |
| ATL→MSN Atlanta to Madison | March 16, 2024 – April 6, 2024 | 4 | — |
| IAH→DTW Houston to Detroit | January 13, 2024 – March 9, 2024 | 12 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL1217 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
60 min late
against a median of 2 min early
DL1217 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 2 min early, but the worst tenth are 62 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 820 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey, different odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL1089 | Delta Air Lines | 88.0% | 8 min early | 1,120 |
| DL1196 | Delta Air Lines | 82.6% | 7 min early | 1,123 |
| DL1153 | Delta Air Lines | 82.6% | 4 min early | 1,084 |
| DL1110 | Delta Air Lines | 78.4% | 4 min early | 958 |
| DL1124 | Delta Air Lines | 73.5% | 3 min early | 1,051 |
| DL1217 this flight | Delta Air Lines | 73.3% | 2 min early | 820 |
| DL1083 | Delta Air Lines | 72.0% | 2 min early | 689 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. DL1217 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 820 records of DL1217 operating ATL → RSW, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
Analysis last recomputed