Flight number record
DL 1461
Delta Air Lines · Minneapolis to Detroit
- Route
- MSP → DTW
- Departs
- 06:00
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1461, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1461 earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 40 minutes. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1461's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 163 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights
Avg delay
40 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.
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Schedule
When DL 1461 flies
DL 1461 flies MSP to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 169 of 365 flights, with 06:10 (106 flights) and 06:04 (86 flights) next.
- Departs 06:00169 flights46.3%
- Departs 06:10106 flights29.0%
- Departs 06:0486 flights23.6%
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 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 1461 runs 4 points better at 93.6%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
DL 1461 next to MSP to DTW
Every carrier on MSP to DTW combined arrived on time 82.7% of the time across 1,884 flights, so DL 1461 is 11 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,881 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.8% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1461 | 365 | 93.6% | 40 min | 0.82% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on MSP–DTW | 1,881 | 82.8% | 59 min | 0.58% | B+ |
| All carriers on MSP–DTW | 1,884 | 82.7% | 59 min | 0.58% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1461 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1461 held fairly steady: 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 93.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 89.9% in Jan–Mar 2026, 96.7% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 93.5% 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 202530 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights93.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights89.9%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights96.7%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights93.5%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 1461 ranged from 90.0% on Friday to 100.0% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1461 runs when it is late
DL 1461 often beats the schedule: 127 of 362 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 16 of the 23 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 5 reached an hour or more. Not one arrived two hours late.
- 15+ min early127 flights35.1%
- Within 15 min212 flights58.6%
- 15–29 min late16 flights4.4%
- 30–59 min late2 flights0.6%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.4%
- 2+ hours late0 flights0.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 362 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 18 of 362 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1461
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 December 2025, 1 hour 58 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 20 December 2025 | 1 hour 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 March 2026 | 1 hour 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 May 2026 | 1 hour 48 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 July 2026 | 1 hour 19 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 April 2026 | 1 hour 13 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1461 runs late
Carrier accounts for 72% of the 909 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 72%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 655 of the 909 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 909 delay minutes reported on DL 1461.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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.
Every one of the 365 flights under DL 1461 in the data flew MSP to DTW. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 1461
For a booking, DL 1461 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 93.6% on time and 0.82% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to DTW, every carrier and departure
- DTW to MSP, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1476 on the same route78.8%
- Delta Air Lines 1519 on the same route89.3%
- Delta Air Lines 1484 on the same route66.2%
- Delta Air Lines 1433 on the same route88.1%
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.