DL1287

DL1287 arrived on time 81.8% of the time, against 85.3% for all LAX → IAH flights, so this departure is 3.5 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Delta Air Lines’ own flights on this route it is 1.8 points worse.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 831 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If DL1287 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DL1287 on LAX → IAH. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

The aircraft flying DL1287 came in 15 or more minutes late on 14% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.

Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into LAX just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 804 of 817 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.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

DL1287 pushes back an average of 14.8 minutes late and reaches the gate at IAH an average of 9.7 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 15.4 minutes on the taxiways at LAX, 1.4 minutes shorter than a typical LAX departure in the same hour.

On arrival at IAH, DL1287 spends 9.6 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 1.1 minutes shorter than a typical IAH arrival (10.7 min).

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 IAH. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 31,468 departures from LAX scheduled in the clock hour DL1287 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at IAH (359,471 flights), not just DL1287’s own. More on taxi time.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

DL1287 is scheduled out of LAX at 6:10 PM, in the 6 PM–7 PM bank. Departures from LAX in that hour arrive on time 77.2% of the time against 81.4% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 4.2 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.

The two airport figures cover every departure from LAX 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.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.

Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL1287 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. DL1287 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.

• UA2377 LAX→IAH United Airlines on the same route, departs 4:10 PM, on time 85.1%
• DL1143 LAX→IAH Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 8:45 AM, on time 85.1%
• UA1416 LAX→IAH United Airlines on the same route, departs 8:15 AM, on time 91.7%
• DL2534 SAT→LAX Delta Air Lines flight into LAX, SAT to LAX, departs 6:00 AM, on time 91.3%