Flight number record
DL 1303
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Minneapolis
- Route
- DTW → MSP
- Departs
- 19:45
- Flights
- 348
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1303, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1303 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 1303 runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 64 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 347 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
11.2%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 348 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 1303 flies
DL 1303 flies DTW to MSP without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:45, used on 113 of 348 flights, with 19:55 (84 flights) and 20:46 (36 flights) next.
- Departs 19:45113 flights32.5%
- Departs 19:5584 flights24.1%
- Departs 20:4636 flights10.3%
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 19:45 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 1303 runs 3 points better at 70.9%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
DL 1303 next to DTW to MSP
Every carrier on DTW to MSP combined arrived on time 79.8% of the time across 1,881 flights, so DL 1303 is 9 points behind it. Delta flew 1,879 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.8% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 10 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1303thin sample | 348 | 70.9% | 75 min | 0.29% | C+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–MSP | 1,879 | 79.8% | 62 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| All carriers on DTW–MSP | 1,881 | 79.8% | 62 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1303 quarter by quarter
DL 1303 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 78.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 60.0%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 70 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 flights60.0%
- Oct–Dec 202579 flights69.6%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights70.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights78.0%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights67.7%
Scale runs 50% to 85%.
By weekday, DL 1303 did best on Saturday at 77.1% on time and worst on Wednesday at 64.0%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1303 runs when it is late
The 101 late arrivals split 29 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 39 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early52 flights15.0%
- Within 15 min194 flights55.9%
- 15–29 min late29 flights8.4%
- 30–59 min late33 flights9.5%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights5.2%
- 2+ hours late21 flights6.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 347 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
25 of 108 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% 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 MSP.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1303
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 January 2026, 5 hours 25 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 January 2026 | 5 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 October 2025 | 5 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 March 2026 | 4 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 September 2025 | 4 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 February 2026 | 3 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1303 runs late
Carrier accounts for 57% of the 7,539 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,265 of the 7,539 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,539 delay minutes reported on DL 1303.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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
11.2% 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 528 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 CLE to ATL (12) and ATL to CLE (12), but none flew often enough under DL 1303 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DTW to MSP only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 348 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 1303
For a booking, DL 1303 is one of the weaker ways to fly DTW to MSP: 9 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to MSP, every carrier and departure
- MSP to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2258 on the same route85.3%
- Delta Air Lines 2203 on the same route75.5%
- Delta Air Lines 1746 on the same route84.5%
- Delta Air Lines 2697 on the same route84.7%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) 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.