Flight number record

DL 1541

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to St. Louis

Route: DTW → STL
Departs: 19:59
Flights: 312
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1541, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1541 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 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 312 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

On time

75.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 307 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.28%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

10.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 312 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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 1541 flies

DL 1541 flies DTW to STL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:59, used on 125 of 312 flights, with 20:00 (90 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 19:59125 flights40.1%
Departs 20:0090 flights28.8%

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 19:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 1541 runs 7 points better at 75.6%. 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 1541 next to DTW to STL

Every carrier on DTW to STL combined arrived on time 77.0% of the time across 1,905 flights, so DL 1541 is about level with it. Delta flew 1,088 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 6 points.

DL 1541 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1541thin sample	312	75.6%	73 min	1.28%	B
All Delta Air Lines on DTW–STL	1,088	80.1%	66 min	1.19%	B
All carriers on DTW–STL	1,905	77.0%	65 min	1.00%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1541 quarter by quarter

DL 1541 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 81.9% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 71.4%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 78 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 202573 flights81.9%
Oct–Dec 202564 flights71.4%
Jan–Mar 202684 flights75.6%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.3%

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

By weekday, DL 1541 did best on Saturday at 86.8% on time and worst on Friday at 65.2%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1541 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 5,458 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
50%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
1%

36% 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 5,458 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 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 5,458 delay minutes reported on DL 1541.

Cancellations sit at 1.28% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.

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. 10.1% 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.

The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including RSW to DTW (16), but none flew often enough under DL 1541 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DTW to STL only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 312 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 1541

For a booking, read DL 1541 as 75.6% on time with 1.28% cancelled over 312 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