Flight number record
DL 1454
Delta Air Lines · Washington to Detroit
- Route
- DCA → DTW
- Departs
- 17:30
- Flights
- 362
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1454, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1454 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 362 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 1454 runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 170 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
16.5%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 362 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When DL 1454 flies
DL 1454 flies DCA to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:30, used on 97 of 362 flights, with 17:28 (61 flights) and 17:59 (52 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 17:3097 flights26.8%
- Departs 17:2861 flights16.9%
- Departs 17:5952 flights14.4%
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 17:30 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 1454 runs 8 points worse at 60.6%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
DL 1454 next to DCA to DTW
Every carrier on DCA to DTW combined arrived on time 76.6% of the time across 2,979 flights, so DL 1454 is 16 points behind it. Delta flew 1,745 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 trails by 21 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1454thin sample | 362 | 60.6% | 83 min | 1.10% | D |
| All Delta Air Lines on DCA–DTW | 1,745 | 79.6% | 88 min | 2.46% | B |
| All carriers on DCA–DTW | 2,979 | 76.6% | 86 min | 3.79% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 1454 quarter by quarter
DL 1454 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 70.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 53.8%, a swing of 16 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 flights53.8%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights70.0%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights60.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights58.4%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1454 did best on Saturday at 82.7% on time and worst on Wednesday at 53.8%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 29 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 1454 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 12,000 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.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
66% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 66 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 11,720 delay minutes reported on DL 1454.
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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
DL 1454 is not only a DCA to DTW flight. It also flew DTW to DCA (362 flights, 48.2% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 362 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DTW to DCAthin sample | 362 | 48.2% | 57 min | 1.10% | F |
What to do with this
Booking DL 1454
For a booking, DL 1454 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 16.5% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to DTW, every carrier and departure
- DTW to DCA, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2869 on the same route93.7%
- Delta Air Lines 1558 on the same route85.6%
- Delta Air Lines 2476 on the same route86.6%
- Delta Air Lines 2030 on the same route69.8%
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.