DL1517

DL1517 arrived on time 90.3% of the time, against 83.5% for all LAX → MCI flights, so this departure is 6.8 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against Delta Air Lines’ own flights on this route it is 3.2 points better.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 794 operations, October 2023 – July 2026 · If DL1517 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 · October 2023 – July 2026

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DL1517 on LAX → MCI. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

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

The aircraft flying DL1517 came in 15 or more minutes late on 7% 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, 737 of 786 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 October 2023 – July 2026

DL1517 pushes back an average of 3.3 minutes late and reaches the gate at MCI an average of 3.4 minutes early. The 6.7 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 15.2 minutes on the taxiways at LAX, 4.3 minutes shorter than a typical LAX departure in the same hour.

On arrival at MCI, DL1517 spends 6.5 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 MCI 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 MCI. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 50,307 departures from LAX scheduled in the clock hour DL1517 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at MCI (152,684 flights), not just DL1517’s own. More on taxi time.

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

DL1517 is scheduled out of LAX at 9:30 AM, in the 9 AM–10 AM bank. Departures from LAX in that hour arrive on time 83.5% of the time against 81.4% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour DL1517 leaves in is an ordinary one for LAX and explains nothing about its record either way.

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 · October 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.

Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL1517 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

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

• DL1434 LAX→SLC Delta Air Lines flight out of LAX, LAX to SLC, departs 9:55 AM, on time 91.4%
• DL2882 SLC→MCI Delta Air Lines flight into MCI, SLC to MCI, departs 9:55 AM, on time 88.3%
• DL799 LAX→MSP Delta Air Lines flight out of LAX, LAX to MSP, departs 9:05 AM, on time 89.6%
• DL861 IND→LAX Delta Air Lines flight into LAX, IND to LAX, departs 7:05 AM, on time 85.9%