Flight number record
DL 2073
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Washington
- Route
- DTW → DCA
- Departs
- 21:28
- Flights
- 355
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2073, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2073 draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 355 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 2073 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 101 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 345 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.82%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
11.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 355 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 2073 flies
DL 2073 flies DTW to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:28, used on 97 of 355 flights, with 21:30 (63 flights) and 21:22 (60 flights) next.
- Departs 21:2897 flights27.3%
- Departs 21:3063 flights17.7%
- Departs 21:2260 flights16.9%
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 21:28 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and DL 2073 runs 3 points worse at 67.2%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
DL 2073 next to DTW to DCA
Every carrier on DTW to DCA combined arrived on time 68.3% of the time across 2,971 flights, so DL 2073 is about level with it. Delta flew 1,741 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 68.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 14 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2073thin sample | 355 | 67.2% | 66 min | 2.82% | C |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–DCA | 1,741 | 68.2% | 60 min | 2.81% | C |
| All carriers on DTW–DCA | 2,971 | 68.3% | 79 min | 4.24% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2073 quarter by quarter
DL 2073 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 53.7%, a swing of 40 points on roughly 71 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 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights72.2%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights61.9%
- Apr–Jun 202688 flights66.7%
- Jul–Sep 202657 flights53.7%
Scale runs 45% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 2073 did best on Saturday at 84.1% on time and worst on Thursday at 58.0%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 26 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2073 runs when it is late
DL 2073 often beats the schedule: 88 of 345 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 113 late arrivals split 43 under half an hour, 29 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 41 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early88 flights25.5%
- Within 15 min144 flights41.7%
- 15–29 min late43 flights12.5%
- 30–59 min late29 flights8.4%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights7.2%
- 2+ hours late16 flights4.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 345 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 98 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 10 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 25 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 DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2073
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 March 2026, 11 hours 32 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in March 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 11 March 2026 | 11 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 June 2026 | 4 hours 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 March 2026 | 4 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 4 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 July 2026 | 3 hours 11 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 2073 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 7,494 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 40%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,047 of the 7,494 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,494 delay minutes reported on DL 2073.
Cancellations run at 2.82%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
11.9% 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.
Every one of the 355 flights under DL 2073 in the data flew DTW to DCA. 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. 355 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 2073
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 2073: 2.82% of its 355 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to DCA, every carrier and departure
- DCA to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1558 on the same route80.7%
- Delta Air Lines 1454 on the same route49.6%
- Delta Air Lines 2476 on the same route86.9%
- Delta Air Lines 2030 on the same route54.6%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.