Flight profile · Delta Air Lines
DL969
New York (LGA) to Atlanta (ATL) · scheduled 4:00 PM – 6:48 PM
How DL969 performs
616 operations, September 2024 – July 2026.
DL969 arrived on time 66.7% of the time, against 78.4% for all LGA → ATL flights — this specific departure is 11.7 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Delta Air Lines’ own flights on this route it is 14.9 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 616 operations, September 2024 – July 2026 · If DL969 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back — the refund checker walks through eligibility.
What stands out
How DL969 compares to other flight numbers, not just to itself.
This flight runs unusually far behind the carrier's own average on this route — worse than 95% of 11,589 comparable flight numbers.
66.7% on time for this specific departure, against 81.6% for the same carrier's other flights on this route.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · September 2024 – July 2026 · The one thing about this specific departure that ranks most extreme against every other published flight number, out of everything FlyerIntel checks — shown only when something clears a real statistical bar, not for every flight.
Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL969 | 66.7% | 2.27% | 0 min | 12.2% | 616 |
| Delta Air Lines on LGA → ATL | 81.6% | 1.89% | -11 min | 7.2% | 14,633 |
| All LGA → ATL flights | 78.4% | 2.54% | -9 min | 8.8% | 24,614 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · September 2024 – July 2026
Why DL969 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
crew, maintenance, boarding, fueling — within the carrier’s control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DL969 on LGA → ATL. A single late flight can carry more than one cause, and only delays of fifteen minutes or more are attributed at all.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering September 2024 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves LGA late, does that still matter by the time it reaches ATL?
DL969 pushes back an average of 22.0 minutes late and reaches the gate at ATL an average of 16.3 minutes late. The 5.8 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 32.0 minutes on the taxiways at LGA, 4.6 minutes longer than a typical LGA departure in the same hour.
On arrival at ATL, DL969 spends 8.3 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 1.3 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 26,041 departures from LGA scheduled in the clock hour DL969 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 DL969’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · September 2024 – July 2026
The hour it leaves LGA
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. DL969 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 26,041 departures from LGA are scheduled in the 4 PM–5 PM hour over the period, against 456,467 across the whole day.
DL969 is scheduled out of LGA at 4:00 PM, in the 4 PM–5 PM bank. Departures from LGA in that hour arrive on time 69.6% of the time against 78.3% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 8.7 points worse 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 · September 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
Other routes DL969 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| HNL→DTW Honolulu to Detroit | December 7, 2023 – September 8, 2024 | 273 | 77.8% |
| ATL→AUS Atlanta to Austin | October 9, 2023 – December 6, 2023 | 47 | — |
| AUS→ATL Austin to Atlanta | October 9, 2023 – November 19, 2023 | 30 | — |
| SAV→ATL Savannah to Atlanta | October 28–31, 2023 | 4 | — |
| ATL→CLE Atlanta to Cleveland | September 17, 2023 – October 8, 2023 | 4 | — |
| CLE→ATL Cleveland to Atlanta | September 17, 2023 – October 8, 2023 | 4 | — |
| DEN→BOS Denver to Boston | July 1, 2023 – September 4, 2023 | 66 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL969 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.
70 min late
against a median of 0 min early
DL969 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 0 min early, but the worst tenth are 70 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 616 operations. Cancelled and diverted flights have no arrival time and are counted separately rather than as very late arrivals.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering September 2024 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey — and not the same odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL342 | Delta Air Lines | 91.8% | 12 min early | 826 |
| DL550 | Delta Air Lines | 91.3% | 9 min early | 815 |
| DL364 | Delta Air Lines | 90.5% | 11 min early | 617 |
| DL992 | Delta Air Lines | 86.3% | 10 min early | 772 |
| DL993 | Delta Air Lines | 85.7% | 11 min early | 762 |
| DL989 | Delta Air Lines | 85.3% | 15 min early | 658 |
| DL990 | Delta Air Lines | 83.8% | 9 min early | 707 |
| DL994 | Delta Air Lines | 80.7% | 9 min early | 704 |
| DL969 this flight | Delta Air Lines | 66.7% | 0 min early | 616 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. DL969 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 616 records of DL969 operating LGA → 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
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