Flight number record
DL 1218
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Austin
- Route
- DTW → AUS
- Departs
- 08:30
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1218, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1218 lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1218's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.65%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
6.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 1218 flies
DL 1218 flies DTW to AUS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:30, used on 74 of 364 flights, with 08:55 (68 flights) and 09:04 (57 flights) next.
- Departs 08:3074 flights20.3%
- Departs 08:5568 flights18.7%
- Departs 09:0457 flights15.7%
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 08:30 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 1218 runs level with that at 83.5%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
DL 1218 next to DTW to AUS
Every carrier on DTW to AUS combined arrived on time 80.1% of the time across 1,307 flights, so DL 1218 is 3 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,290 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 2 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1218thin sample | 364 | 83.5% | 59 min | 1.65% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–AUS | 1,290 | 80.1% | 53 min | 1.40% | B |
| All carriers on DTW–AUS | 1,307 | 80.1% | 53 min | 1.38% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1218 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1218 held fairly steady: 86.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 82.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 80.0% in Jan–Mar 2026, 86.5% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 85.0% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights86.7%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights82.0%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights80.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.5%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights85.0%
Scale runs 70% to 90%.
By weekday, DL 1218 did best on Tuesday at 92.3% on time and worst on Friday at 72.5%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1218 runs when it is late
DL 1218 often beats the schedule: 105 of 358 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 59 late arrivals split 24 under half an hour, 13 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 22 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early105 flights29.3%
- Within 15 min194 flights54.2%
- 15–29 min late24 flights6.7%
- 30–59 min late13 flights3.6%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights5.0%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 358 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
9 of 50 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. In the other direction, 18 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at AUS.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1218
The latest arrival of the period was on 9 January 2026, 4 hours 38 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 9 January 2026 | 4 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 June 2026 | 4 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 December 2025 | 2 hours 59 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 May 2026 | 2 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 December 2025 | 1 hour 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why DL 1218 runs late
Carrier accounts for 60% of the 3,459 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,076 of the 3,459 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,459 delay minutes reported on DL 1218.
Cancellations sit at 1.65% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
6.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,149 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 one other city pair in the data, including AUS to DTW (102), but none flew often enough under DL 1218 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DTW to AUS only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 1218
For a booking, read DL 1218 as 83.5% on time with 1.65% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to AUS, every carrier and departure
- AUS to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1612 on the same route80.1%
- Delta Air Lines 2578 on the same route74.7%
- Delta Air Lines 1012 on the same route80.8%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.