DL542

DL542’s scheduled departure has moved during the period FlyerIntel has on file: it typically left around 12:00 PM earlier on, and around 1:30 PM more recently — a 90-minute shift, not the few minutes of day-to-day rounding every published schedule carries. Confirm the current departure time before booking around an older listing.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 755 operations, June 2024 – July 2026 · If DL542 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 · June 2024 – July 2026

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DL542 on SEA → ATL. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026

The aircraft flying DL542 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 SEA just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 716 of 750 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 June 2024 – July 2026

DL542 pushes back an average of 13.1 minutes late and reaches the gate at ATL an average of 3.2 minutes late. The 9.9 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 25.8 minutes on the taxiways at SEA, 2.1 minutes longer than a typical SEA departure in the same hour.

On arrival at ATL, DL542 spends 9.9 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 ATL 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 ATL. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 44,293 departures from SEA scheduled in the clock hour DL542 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 DL542’s own. More on taxi time.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026

DL542 is scheduled out of SEA at 11:55 AM, in the 11 AM–12 PM bank. Departures from SEA in that hour arrive on time 74.7% of the time against 79.1% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 4.4 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.

The two airport figures cover every departure from SEA 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 · June 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.

Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL542 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026

Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. DL542 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.

• DL560 SEA→ATL Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 3:15 PM, on time 85.0%
• AS334 SEA→ATL Alaska Airlines on the same route, departs 6:30 AM, on time 75.9%
• DL652 SEA→ATL Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 11:35 PM, on time 81.7%