Flight number record
DL 1648
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Denver
- Route
- DTW → DEN
- Departs
- 12:50
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 1648, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 1648 earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 1648's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 361 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
4.7%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Schedule
When DL 1648 flies
DL 1648 flies DTW to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:50, used on 105 of 364 flights, with 12:45 (65 flights) and 13:00 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 12:50105 flights28.8%
- Departs 12:4565 flights17.9%
- Departs 13:0037 flights10.2%
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 12:50 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and DL 1648 runs 6 points better at 85.0%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
DL 1648 next to DTW to DEN
Every carrier on DTW to DEN combined arrived on time 79.7% of the time across 3,089 flights, so DL 1648 is 5 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,253 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 3 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 1648thin sample | 364 | 85.0% | 60 min | 0.55% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–DEN | 1,253 | 78.6% | 58 min | 0.32% | B+ |
| All carriers on DTW–DEN | 3,089 | 79.7% | 61 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 1648 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 1648 held fairly steady: 90.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 81.1% in Oct–Dec 2025, 81.1% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 87.9% 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 202592 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights81.1%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights81.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights87.9%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 1648 did best on Wednesday at 94.2% on time and worst on Thursday at 80.4%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why DL 1648 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 3,225 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,384 of the 3,225 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,225 delay minutes reported on DL 1648.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,123 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.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including DEN to DTW (233), but none flew often enough under DL 1648 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DTW to DEN only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 1648
For a booking, DL 1648 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.0% on time and 0.55% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to DTW, the return direction
- United Airlines 302 on the same route82.1%
- Delta Air Lines 1113 on the same route85.4%
- Delta Air Lines 2431 on the same route71.1%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.