Flight number record

DL 1543

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Dallas-Fort Worth

Route: DTW → DFW
Departs: 15:50
Flights: 317
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1543, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 1543 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 317 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 1543 runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 56 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 311 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.26%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

9.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 317 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 1543 flies

DL 1543 flies DTW to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:50, used on 165 of 317 flights, with 15:55 (65 flights) and 16:00 (34 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:50165 flights52.1%
Departs 15:5565 flights20.5%
Departs 16:0034 flights10.7%

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 15:50 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 1543 runs level with that at 72.0%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 1543 next to DTW to DFW

Every carrier on DTW to DFW combined arrived on time 75.3% of the time across 3,509 flights, so DL 1543 is 3 points behind it. Delta flew 1,405 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 10 points.

DL 1543 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 1543thin sample	317	72.0%	57 min	1.26%	C
All Delta Air Lines on DTW–DFW	1,405	76.3%	57 min	1.71%	B
All carriers on DTW–DFW	3,509	75.3%	76 min	2.25%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 1543 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 1543 held fairly steady: 73.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 69.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 77.3% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 68.1% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202577 flights73.3%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights69.7%
Jan–Mar 202676 flights77.3%
Apr–Jun 202674 flights68.1%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 1543 did best on Thursday at 84.0% on time and worst on Friday at 64.0%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 1543 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 4,979 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
40%
National Airspace System
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
20%
Extreme weather
3%

38% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,884 minutes out of 4,979, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,979 delay minutes reported on DL 1543.

Cancellations sit at 1.26% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.63%.

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. 9.6% 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 986 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 317 flights under DL 1543 in the data flew DTW to DFW. 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. 317 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 1543

For a booking, read DL 1543 as 72.0% on time with 1.26% cancelled over 317 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