Flight number record

DL 1043

Delta Air Lines · Houston to Detroit

Route: IAH → DTW
Departs: 15:09
Flights: 266
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1043, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1043 earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 266 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1043's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 64 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 263 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.75%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

6.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 266 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When DL 1043 flies

DL 1043 flies IAH to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:09, used on 53 of 266 flights, with 15:10 (44 flights) and 11:32 (40 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:0953 flights19.9%
Departs 15:1044 flights16.5%
Departs 11:3240 flights15.0%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 15:09 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 1043 runs 12 points better at 84.0%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 1043 next to IAH to DTW

Every carrier on IAH to DTW combined arrived on time 78.8% of the time across 2,137 flights, so DL 1043 is 5 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,322 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 2 points.

DL 1043 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1043thin sample	266	84.0%	73 min	0.75%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on IAH–DTW	1,322	82.3%	76 min	0.76%	B+
All carriers on IAH–DTW	2,137	78.8%	73 min	1.22%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1043 quarter by quarter

DL 1043 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 91.1% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 76.4%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 89 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights81.1%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights91.1%
Jan–Mar 202628 flights—
Apr–Jun 202655 flights76.4%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1043 did best on Wednesday at 94.6% on time and worst on Tuesday at 78.9%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1043 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 3,046 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
59%
Carrier
24%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
2%

59% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 3,046 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 3,046 delay minutes reported on DL 1043.

Cancellations are rare at 0.75%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

6.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,075 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including DTW to IAH (157) and DTW to DFW (36), but none flew often enough under DL 1043 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to DTW only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 266 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking DL 1043

For a booking, read DL 1043 as 84.0% on time with 0.75% cancelled over 266 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

A flight number here means Delta Air Lines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures