Flight number record

DL 1218

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Austin

Route: DTW → AUS
Departs: 08:55
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1218, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1218 earns an A. 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 1218's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 1218 flies

DL 1218 flies DTW to AUS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:55, used on 89 of 364 flights, with 08:30 (74 flights) and 08:50 (72 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:5589 flights24.5%
Departs 08:3074 flights20.3%
Departs 08:5072 flights19.8%

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 08:55 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 1218 runs level with that at 85.0%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 1218 next to DTW to AUS

Every carrier on DTW to AUS combined arrived on time 79.8% of the time across 1,334 flights, so DL 1218 is 5 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,283 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 3 points.

DL 1218 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1218thin sample	364	85.0%	57 min	1.10%	A
All Delta Air Lines on DTW–AUS	1,283	79.6%	52 min	1.25%	B
All carriers on DTW–AUS	1,334	79.8%	53 min	1.20%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1218 quarter by quarter

DL 1218 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 91.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 80.0%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 91 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 flights91.3%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights82.0%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights80.0%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.5%

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

By weekday, DL 1218 did best on Thursday at 94.2% on time and worst on Friday at 76.5%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1218 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 61% of the 3,052 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.

Carrier
61%
National Airspace System
22%
Late-arriving aircraft
17%

The largest share of delay minutes, 61%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,859 of the 3,052 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,052 delay minutes reported on DL 1218.

Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.0% 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 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. 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 one other city pair in the data, including AUS to DTW (40), 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, DL 1218 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.0% on time and 1.10% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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