Flight number record
DL 1478
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Detroit
- Route
- ATL → DTW
- Departs
- 18:45
- Flights
- 347
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1478, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1478 sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 347 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
75.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 346 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
9.2%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 347 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 347 flights, with 18:01 (36 flights) next.
- Departs 18:4560 flights17.3%
- Departs 18:0136 flights10.4%
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 18:45 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 1478 runs 7 points better at 75.4%. 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 1478 next to ATL to DTW
Every carrier on ATL to DTW combined arrived on time 76.4% of the time across 4,821 flights, so DL 1478 is about level with it. Delta flew 3,774 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1478thin sample | 347 | 75.4% | 70 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on ATL–DTW | 3,774 | 77.9% | 60 min | 0.50% | B+ |
| All carriers on ATL–DTW | 4,821 | 76.4% | 64 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1478 quarter by quarter
DL 1478 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 100.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 62.3%, a swing of 38 points on roughly 69 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 flights100.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights72.8%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights78.9%
- Apr–Jun 202682 flights74.1%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights62.3%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 1478 did best on Saturday at 81.2% on time and worst on Friday at 67.3%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1478 runs when it is late
The 85 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 27 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 32 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early58 flights16.8%
- Within 15 min203 flights58.7%
- 15–29 min late26 flights7.5%
- 30–59 min late27 flights7.8%
- 1–2 hours late19 flights5.5%
- 2+ hours late13 flights3.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 346 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 87 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. 11 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1478
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 July 2026, 4 hours 48 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in July 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 July 2026 | 4 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 July 2026 | 4 hours 33 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 October 2025 | 4 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 July 2026 | 4 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 May 2026 | 4 hours 5 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why DL 1478 runs late
Carrier accounts for 45% of the 5,980 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,980 delay minutes reported on DL 1478.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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
9.2% 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 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.
Every one of the 347 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. 347 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 75.4% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 347 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to DTW, every carrier and departure
- DTW to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1298 on the same route84.3%
- Delta Air Lines 1031 on the same route83.9%
- Delta Air Lines 1240 on the same route82.7%
- Delta Air Lines 1646 on the same route90.6%
- Delta Air Lines 1005 on the same route75.2%
- Delta Air Lines 2940 on the same route72.6%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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
- 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.