Flight profile · Delta Air Lines
DL2026
Raleigh–Durham (RDU) to Atlanta (ATL) · scheduled 3:35 PM – 5:05 PM
How DL2026 performs
647 operations, December 2023 – July 2026.
DL2026 arrived on time 87.0% of the time, against 85.0% for all RDU → ATL flights, so this departure is 2.0 percentage points better than the route as a whole.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 647 operations, December 2023 – July 2026 · If DL2026 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where DL2026 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL2026 | 87.0% | 0.77% | -8 min | 6.6% | 647 |
| Delta Air Lines on RDU → ATL | 86.9% | 0.92% | -10 min | 4.8% | 11,061 |
| All RDU → ATL flights | 85.0% | 1.13% | -9 min | 5.5% | 14,371 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · December 2023 – July 2026
Why DL2026 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DL2026 on RDU → ATL. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering December 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies DL2026 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying DL2026 came in 15 or more minutes late on 13% 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 RDU just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 631 of 643 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 |
|---|---|
| DL2026 | 13% |
| Network, same turn | 17% |
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 DL2026’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is lower than the network’s. There are not enough departures in both groups to compare how it left.
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 December 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves RDU late, does that still matter by the time it reaches ATL?
DL2026 pushes back an average of 12.2 minutes late and reaches the gate at ATL an average of 3.9 minutes late. The 8.3 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 16.3 minutes on the taxiways at RDU, 2.3 minutes shorter than a typical RDU departure in the same hour.
On arrival at ATL, DL2026 spends 8.4 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 1.2 minutes shorter than a typical ATL arrival (9.6 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 ATL. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 10,240 departures from RDU scheduled in the clock hour DL2026 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at ATL (1,012,161 flights), not just DL2026’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · December 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves RDU
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. DL2026 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 10,240 departures from RDU are scheduled in the 3 PM–4 PM hour over the period, against 179,935 across the whole day.
DL2026 is scheduled out of RDU at 3:35 PM, in the 3 PM–4 PM bank. Departures from RDU in that hour arrive on time 74.3% of the time against 79.4% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 5.1 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from RDU 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 · December 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
Other routes DL2026 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→RDU Atlanta to Raleigh–Durham | December 24, 2023 – July 31, 2026 | 632 | 87.5% |
| SLC→EWR Salt Lake City to Newark | June 8, 2025 – December 19, 2025 | 195 | 66.5% |
| EWR→SLC Newark to Salt Lake City | June 8, 2025 – August 10, 2025 | 62 | — |
| BIS→MSP Bismarck to Minneapolis | May 7, 2024 – June 6, 2024 | 31 | — |
| ECP→ATL Panama City Beach to Atlanta | November 5, 2023 – December 15, 2023 | 39 | — |
| ATL→ECP Atlanta to Panama City Beach | December 7–15, 2023 | 9 | — |
| LAS→LGA Las Vegas to New York | September 9, 2023 – November 4, 2023 | 9 | — |
| AUS→DTW Austin to Detroit | September 5, 2023 – October 27, 2023 | 46 | — |
| LGA→LAS New York to Las Vegas | September 9, 2023 – October 7, 2023 | 5 | — |
| ATL→FAY Atlanta to Fayetteville | July 5, 2023 – September 4, 2023 | 50 | — |
| BOS→BUF Boston to Buffalo | July 15, 2023 – August 5, 2023 | 4 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL2026 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.
24 min late
against a median of 8 min early
Percentiles over 647 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering December 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL2634 | Delta Air Lines | 91.8% | 10 min early | 602 |
| DL2633 | Delta Air Lines | 91.4% | 12 min early | 851 |
| DL2026 this flight | Delta Air Lines | 87.0% | 8 min early | 647 |
| DL2600 | Delta Air Lines | 76.9% | 7 min early | 630 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. DL2026 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 647 records of DL2026 operating RDU → ATL, 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