Flight number record
DL 1454
Delta Air Lines · Washington to Detroit
- Route
- DCA → DTW
- Departs
- 17:30
- Flights
- 361
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 361 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 1454 runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 148 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 352 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.49%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
14.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 361 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 80 of 361 flights, with 17:29 (78 flights) and 17:59 (52 flights) next.
- Departs 17:3080 flights22.2%
- Departs 17:2978 flights21.6%
- Departs 17:5952 flights14.4%
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 17:30 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 1454 runs 6 points worse at 62.5%. 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 1454 next to DCA to DTW
Every carrier on DCA to DTW combined arrived on time 75.3% of the time across 2,972 flights, so DL 1454 is 13 points behind it. Delta flew 1,741 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 19 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1454thin sample | 361 | 62.5% | 72 min | 2.49% | D |
| All Delta Air Lines on DCA–DTW | 1,741 | 78.3% | 84 min | 2.93% | B |
| All carriers on DCA–DTW | 2,972 | 75.3% | 82 min | 4.04% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1454 quarter by quarter
DL 1454 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 76.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 52.7%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 72 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 flights76.7%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights70.0%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights60.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights58.4%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights52.7%
Scale runs 45% to 80%.
By weekday, DL 1454 did best on Saturday at 86.0% on time and worst on Thursday at 54.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 32 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1454 runs when it is late
The 132 late arrivals split 35 under half an hour, 46 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 51 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early65 flights18.5%
- Within 15 min155 flights44.0%
- 15–29 min late35 flights9.9%
- 30–59 min late46 flights13.1%
- 1–2 hours late34 flights9.7%
- 2+ hours late17 flights4.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 352 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
30 of 153 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1454
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 June 2026, 7 hours 28 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 14 June 2026 | 7 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 June 2026 | 6 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 June 2026 | 5 hours 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 May 2026 | 5 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 March 2026 | 5 hours 14 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1454 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 65% of the 9,513 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 65%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
65% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,513 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 65 to one. The split is drawn from 9,513 delay minutes reported on DL 1454.
Cancellations sit at 2.49% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
14.5% 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.
DL 1454 is not only a DCA to DTW flight. It also flew DTW to DCA (360 flights, 49.6% 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. 361 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 | 360 | 49.6% | 50 min | 1.94% | F |
What to do with this
Booking DL 1454
For a booking, DL 1454 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 14.5% 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 1558 on the same route84.5%
- Delta Air Lines 2476 on the same route83.7%
- Delta Air Lines 2869 on the same route92.8%
- Delta Air Lines 2030 on the same route66.9%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.