Flight number record

DL 2053

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Atlanta

Route: DTW → ATL
Departs: 18:04
Flights: 358
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2053, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2053 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 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 358 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

On time

73.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

10.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 358 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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 2053 flies

DL 2053 flies DTW to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:04, used on 64 of 358 flights, with 18:00 (39 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:0464 flights17.9%
Departs 18:0039 flights10.9%

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 18:04 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 2053 runs 6 points better at 73.9%. 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 2053 next to DTW to ATL

Every carrier on DTW to ATL combined arrived on time 79.0% of the time across 4,881 flights, so DL 2053 is 5 points behind it. Delta flew 3,703 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 8 points.

DL 2053 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2053thin sample	358	73.9%	68 min	0.00%	C+
All Delta Air Lines on DTW–ATL	3,703	81.6%	68 min	0.49%	B+
All carriers on DTW–ATL	4,881	79.0%	75 min	0.80%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2053 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 2053 held fairly steady: 76.1% in Jul–Sep 2025, 72.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 76.8% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 70.3% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights76.1%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights72.8%
Jan–Mar 202683 flights76.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights70.3%

Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2053 ranged from 69.2% on Monday to 79.6% on Wednesday. With about 51 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 2053 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 57% of the 6,289 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
57%
Late-arriving aircraft
24%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
5%

The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, 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 3,605 of the 6,289 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,289 delay minutes reported on DL 2053.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

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. 10.9% 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 594 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 358 flights under DL 2053 in the data flew DTW to ATL. 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. 358 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 2053

For a booking, DL 2053 is one of the weaker ways to fly DTW to ATL: 5 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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