Flight number record
DL 1043
Delta Air Lines · Houston to Detroit
- Route
- IAH → DTW
- Departs
- 11:32
- Flights
- 266
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 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 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 72 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 265 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.38%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 266 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Schedule
When DL 1043 flies
DL 1043 flies IAH to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:32, used on 73 of 266 flights, with 15:10 (44 flights) and 11:34 (31 flights) next.
- Departs 11:3273 flights27.4%
- Departs 15:1044 flights16.5%
- Departs 11:3431 flights11.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 11:32 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and DL 1043 runs 6 points better at 84.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
DL 1043 next to IAH to DTW
Every carrier on IAH to DTW combined arrived on time 78.9% of the time across 2,088 flights, so DL 1043 is 6 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,327 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 3 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1043thin sample | 266 | 84.5% | 56 min | 0.38% | B+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on IAH–DTW | 1,327 | 82.4% | 72 min | 0.68% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAH–DTW | 2,088 | 78.9% | 74 min | 1.10% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1043 quarter by quarter
DL 1043 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 76.4%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 67 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 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights91.1%
- Jan–Mar 202628 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202655 flights76.4%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights77.4%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1043 did best on Wednesday at 97.3% on time and worst on Tuesday at 75.7%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1043 runs when it is late
DL 1043 often beats the schedule: 81 of 265 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 21 of the 41 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 9 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early81 flights30.6%
- Within 15 min143 flights54.0%
- 15–29 min late21 flights7.9%
- 30–59 min late11 flights4.2%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.9%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 265 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 45 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 15 still arrived on time. 11 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1043
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 September 2025, 5 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 September 2025 | 5 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 June 2026 | 4 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 August 2026 | 4 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 November 2025 | 2 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 September 2025 | 1 hour 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 1043 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 70% of the 2,274 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 70%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
70% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,274 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 to one. The split is drawn from 2,274 delay minutes reported on DL 1043.
Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, below the national 1.89% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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.
The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including DTW to IAH (219) 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 84.5% on time with 0.38% cancelled over 266 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to DTW, every carrier and departure
- DTW to IAH, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1389 on the same route90.3%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.