Flight number record

DL 2481

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Charlotte

Route: DTW → CLT
Departs: 07:05
Flights: 304
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2481, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2481 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 304 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2481's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 103 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 297 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.97%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 304 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 2481 flies

DL 2481 flies DTW to CLT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:05, used on 133 of 304 flights, with 07:20 (77 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:05133 flights43.8%
Departs 07:2077 flights25.3%

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 07:05 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2481 runs level with that at 87.9%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

DL 2481 next to DTW to CLT

Every carrier on DTW to CLT combined arrived on time 83.8% of the time across 3,537 flights, so DL 2481 is 4 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,345 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 6 points.

DL 2481 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2481thin sample	304	87.9%	59 min	1.97%	A
All Delta Air Lines on DTW–CLT	1,345	82.3%	72 min	1.49%	B
All carriers on DTW–CLT	3,537	83.8%	87 min	1.70%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2481 quarter by quarter

DL 2481 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 95.9% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 83.5%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 76 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 202574 flights95.9%
Oct–Dec 202575 flights85.1%
Jan–Mar 202681 flights83.5%
Apr–Jun 202674 flights87.3%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2481 did best on Wednesday at 95.9% on time and worst on Sunday at 80.9%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2481 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 72% of the 2,111 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
72%
National Airspace System
28%

The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, 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 1,526 of the 2,111 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,111 delay minutes reported on DL 2481.

Cancellations sit at 1.97% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% 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 500 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 CLT to DTW (13), but none flew often enough under DL 2481 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DTW to CLT only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 304 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 2481

For a booking, read DL 2481 as 87.9% on time with 1.97% cancelled over 304 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

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