Flight number record
DL 1243
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Tampa
- Route
- DTW → TPA
- Departs
- 15:55
- Flights
- 307
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1243, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1243 lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 307 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
81.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 300 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.63%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
9.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 307 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 1243 flies
DL 1243 flies DTW to TPA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:55, used on 38 of 307 flights, with 14:19 (36 flights) and 14:24 (36 flights) next.
- Departs 15:5538 flights12.4%
- Departs 14:1936 flights11.7%
- Departs 14:2436 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 15:55 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and DL 1243 runs 9 points better at 81.0%. 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 1243 next to DTW to TPA
Every carrier on DTW to TPA combined arrived on time 78.7% of the time across 2,290 flights, so DL 1243 is 2 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,716 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1243thin sample | 307 | 81.0% | 68 min | 1.63% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–TPA | 1,716 | 81.5% | 63 min | 1.22% | B |
| All carriers on DTW–TPA | 2,290 | 78.7% | 65 min | 1.88% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1243 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1243 held fairly steady: 81.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 80.7% in Jan–Mar 2026, 82.2% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 75.0% 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 202520 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202560 flights81.4%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights80.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights82.2%
- Jul–Sep 202650 flights75.0%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1243 did best on Saturday at 89.7% on time and worst on Sunday at 74.4%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1243 runs when it is late
The 57 late arrivals split 16 under half an hour, 14 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 27 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early57 flights19.0%
- Within 15 min186 flights62.0%
- 15–29 min late16 flights5.3%
- 30–59 min late14 flights4.7%
- 1–2 hours late17 flights5.7%
- 2+ hours late10 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 300 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 53 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. In the other direction, 16 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 TPA.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1243
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 July 2026, 3 hours 27 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in June 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 July 2026 | 3 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 July 2026 | 3 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 June 2026 | 2 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 June 2026 | 2 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 June 2026 | 2 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1243 runs late
Carrier accounts for 56% of the 3,893 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,179 of the 3,893 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,893 delay minutes reported on DL 1243.
Cancellations sit at 1.63% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.65%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 983 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 TPA to DTW (165) and JAX to LGA (16), but none flew often enough under DL 1243 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DTW to TPA only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 307 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 1243
For a booking, read DL 1243 as 81.0% on time with 1.63% cancelled over 307 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to TPA, every carrier and departure
- TPA to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1355 on the same route76.9%
- Delta Air Lines 2852 on the same route88.0%
- Delta Air Lines 2587 on the same route79.8%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.