Flight number record
DL 1543
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- DTW → DFW
- Departs
- 15:50
- Flights
- 318
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 318 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
73.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 312 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
9.3%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 318 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 141 of 318 flights, with 15:55 (90 flights) and 16:00 (34 flights) next.
- Departs 15:50141 flights44.3%
- Departs 15:5590 flights28.3%
- Departs 16:0034 flights10.7%
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 15:50 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and DL 1543 runs level with that at 73.7%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
DL 1543 next to DTW to DFW
Every carrier on DTW to DFW combined arrived on time 75.8% of the time across 3,482 flights, so DL 1543 is 2 points behind it. Delta flew 1,406 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1543thin sample | 318 | 73.7% | 55 min | 0.94% | C+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–DFW | 1,406 | 77.4% | 57 min | 1.71% | B |
| All carriers on DTW–DFW | 3,482 | 75.8% | 73 min | 2.24% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 1543 quarter by quarter
DL 1543 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 83.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 68.1%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 80 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 202529 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights69.7%
- Jan–Mar 202676 flights77.3%
- Apr–Jun 202674 flights68.1%
- Jul–Sep 202649 flights83.0%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1543 did best on Thursday at 84.3% on time and worst on Monday at 68.6%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 1543 runs when it is late
DL 1543 often beats the schedule: 81 of 312 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 82 late arrivals split 31 under half an hour, 22 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 29 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early81 flights26.0%
- Within 15 min149 flights47.8%
- 15–29 min late31 flights9.9%
- 30–59 min late22 flights7.1%
- 1–2 hours late21 flights6.7%
- 2+ hours late8 flights2.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 312 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 58 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 29 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DFW.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 1543
The latest arrival of the period was on 12 June 2026, 3 hours 46 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across June, November, September and January, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 12 June 2026 | 3 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 November 2025 | 2 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 September 2025 | 2 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 January 2026 | 2 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 January 2026 | 2 hours 22 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 1543 runs late
Carrier accounts for 44% of the 4,531 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Carrier
- 35%National Airspace System
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
35% 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 1,607 minutes out of 4,531, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,531 delay minutes reported on DL 1543.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.94%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
9.3% 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 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.
Every one of the 318 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. 318 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 73.7% on time with 0.94% cancelled over 318 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1207 on the same route73.0%
- Delta Air Lines 2746 on the same route80.6%
- American Airlines 1108 on the same route85.4%
- Delta Air Lines 1041 on the same route84.4%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.