Flight number record

DL 2431

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Denver

Route: DTW → DEN
Departs: 16:18
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2431, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2431 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 2431 runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 65 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

56 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 2431 flies

DL 2431 flies DTW to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:18, used on 56 of 365 flights, with 16:11 (53 flights) and 16:20 (42 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 16:1856 flights15.3%
Departs 16:1153 flights14.5%
Departs 16:2042 flights11.5%

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 16:18 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 2431 runs level with that at 71.1%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 2431 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 2431 is 9 points behind 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 trails by 11 points.

DL 2431 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2431	365	71.1%	56 min	0.00%	C+
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 2431 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 2431 held fairly steady: 75.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 73.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 65.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 70.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights75.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights73.6%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights65.6%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights70.0%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2431 did best on Tuesday at 75.0% on time and worst on Friday at 61.5%. 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 2431 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 5,806 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
39%
Carrier
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
18%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 2,171 of the 5,806 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,806 delay minutes reported on DL 2431.

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

7.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

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.

Every one of the 365 flights under DL 2431 in the data flew DTW to DEN. 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. 365 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 2431

For a booking, DL 2431 is one of the weaker ways to fly DTW to DEN: 9 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