Flight number record

DL 1478

Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Detroit

Route: ATL → DTW
Departs: 18:45
Flights: 356
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1478, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1478 lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 356 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

On time

76.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 356 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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.

Schedule

When DL 1478 flies

DL 1478 flies ATL to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:45, used on 60 of 356 flights, with 18:01 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:4560 flights16.9%
Departs 18:0136 flights10.1%

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 18:45 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 1478 runs 8 points better at 76.3%. 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 1478 next to ATL to DTW

Every carrier on ATL to DTW combined arrived on time 78.0% of the time across 4,871 flights, so DL 1478 is 2 points behind it. Delta flew 3,698 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 5 points.

DL 1478 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1478thin sample	356	76.3%	67 min	0.00%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DTW	3,698	79.5%	57 min	0.51%	B+
All carriers on ATL–DTW	4,871	78.0%	63 min	0.82%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1478 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1478 held fairly steady: 79.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 72.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 78.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 74.1% in Apr–Jun 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 202592 flights79.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights72.8%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights78.9%
Apr–Jun 202682 flights74.1%

Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1478 did best on Wednesday at 85.7% on time and worst on Friday at 67.3%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1478 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 5,625 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.

Carrier
54%
National Airspace System
20%
Late-arriving aircraft
14%
Extreme weather
12%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,625 delay minutes reported on DL 1478.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 594 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

Every one of the 356 flights under DL 1478 in the data flew ATL 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. 356 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 1478

For a booking, read DL 1478 as 76.3% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 356 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures