Flight profile · Delta Air Lines
DL869
New York (LGA) to Dallas–Fort Worth (DFW) · scheduled 12:00 PM – 3:52 PM
How DL869 performs
642 operations, June 2024 – July 2026.
DL869 arrived on time 77.3% of the time, against 74.7% for all LGA → DFW flights, so this departure is 2.6 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against Delta Air Lines’ own flights on this route it is 1.6 points better.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 642 operations, June 2024 – July 2026 · If DL869 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where DL869 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL869 | 77.3% | 1.87% | -11 min | 10.9% | 642 |
| Delta Air Lines on LGA → DFW | 75.7% | 2.50% | -10 min | 10.8% | 6,112 |
| All LGA → DFW flights | 74.7% | 3.23% | -9 min | 10.9% | 20,144 |
DL869 has cancelled 1.87% of its scheduled departures (12 of 642), against 3.23% for all LGA → DFW flights — this specific departure cancels 1.4 percentage points less often than the route as a whole. Different flight numbers on the same route can carry different aircraft, crews and schedules, so this is a fact about DL869 specifically, not about the route it flies.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026
Why DL869 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DL869 on LGA → DFW. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies DL869 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying DL869 came in 15 or more minutes late on 9% 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 LGA just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 573 of 632 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 |
|---|---|
| DL869 | 9% |
| 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 DL869’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 June 2024 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves LGA late, does that still matter by the time it reaches DFW?
DL869 pushes back an average of 11.5 minutes late and reaches the gate at DFW an average of 5.4 minutes late. The 6.1 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 24.3 minutes on the taxiways at LGA, 2.4 minutes longer than a typical LGA departure in the same hour.
On arrival at DFW, DL869 spends 12.4 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 1.1 minutes shorter than a typical DFW arrival (13.5 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 DFW. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 27,622 departures from LGA scheduled in the clock hour DL869 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at DFW (961,642 flights), not just DL869’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026
The hour it leaves LGA
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. DL869 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 27,622 departures from LGA are scheduled in the 12 PM–1 PM hour over the period, against 456,467 across the whole day.
DL869 is scheduled out of LGA at 12:00 PM, in the 12 PM–1 PM bank. Departures from LGA in that hour arrive on time 81.9% of the time against 78.3% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 3.6 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from LGA 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.
Other routes DL869 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DFW→LGA Dallas–Fort Worth to New York | June 7, 2024 – July 31, 2026 | 505 | 70.0% |
| TPA→BOS Tampa to Boston | June 8, 2024 – July 6, 2024 | 5 | — |
| SEA→DTW Seattle to Detroit | July 1, 2023 – June 6, 2024 | 252 | 96.0% |
| MSP→CLT Minneapolis to Charlotte | April 9, 2024 – May 6, 2024 | 28 | — |
| IAD→SLC Washington to Salt Lake City | January 8, 2024 – March 9, 2024 | 62 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL869 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.
63 min late
against a median of 11 min early
DL869 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 11 min early, but the worst tenth are 74 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 642 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey, different odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA1597 | American Airlines | 87.9% | 15 min early | 607 |
| DL873 | Delta Air Lines | 82.4% | 15 min early | 769 |
| DL869 this flight | Delta Air Lines | 77.3% | 11 min early | 642 |
| AA1056 | American Airlines | 70.0% | 7 min early | 835 |
| DL846 | Delta Air Lines | 66.5% | 2 min early | 724 |
| F93423 | Frontier Airlines | 63.2% | 1 min early | 754 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. DL869 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 642 records of DL869 operating LGA → DFW, 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
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