Flight number record
DL 1541
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to St. Louis
- Route
- DTW → STL
- Departs
- 19:59
- Flights
- 321
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 321 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
75.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 314 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.56%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
10.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 321 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 113 of 321 flights, with 20:00 (93 flights) next.
- Departs 19:59113 flights35.2%
- Departs 20:0093 flights29.0%
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 19:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 1541 runs 8 points better at 75.5%. 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 1541 next to DTW to STL
Every carrier on DTW to STL combined arrived on time 76.6% of the time across 1,899 flights, so DL 1541 is about level with it. Delta flew 1,104 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.4% 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 1541thin sample | 321 | 75.5% | 76 min | 1.56% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–STL | 1,104 | 80.4% | 63 min | 1.27% | B |
| All carriers on DTW–STL | 1,899 | 76.6% | 64 min | 1.11% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1541 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1541 held fairly steady: 71.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 75.6% in Jan–Mar 2026, 73.3% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 76.3% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202520 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202564 flights71.4%
- Jan–Mar 202684 flights75.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.3%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights76.3%
Scale runs 65% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1541 did best on Saturday at 82.9% on time and worst on Sunday at 65.2%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1541 runs when it is late
DL 1541 often beats the schedule: 91 of 314 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 77 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 26 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 33 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early91 flights29.0%
- Within 15 min146 flights46.5%
- 15–29 min late18 flights5.7%
- 30–59 min late26 flights8.3%
- 1–2 hours late19 flights6.1%
- 2+ hours late14 flights4.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 314 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
11 of 79 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1541
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 February 2026, 10 hours 34 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 February 2026 | 10 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 July 2026 | 5 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 June 2026 | 3 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 June 2026 | 3 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 May 2026 | 3 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 1541 runs late
Carrier accounts for 47% of the 5,848 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Carrier
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,848 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 to one. The split is drawn from 5,848 delay minutes reported on DL 1541.
Cancellations sit at 1.56% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.62%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
10.5% 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.
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. 321 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 75.5% on time with 1.56% cancelled over 321 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to STL, every carrier and departure
- STL to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2822 on the same route78.7%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) 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.