Flight number record
DL 2481
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Charlotte
- Route
- DTW → CLT
- Departs
- 07:05
- Flights
- 305
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2481, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2481 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 305 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2481's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 83 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 299 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
5.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 305 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 127 of 305 flights, with 07:20 (60 flights) and 07:00 (34 flights) next.
- Departs 07:05127 flights41.6%
- Departs 07:2060 flights19.7%
- Departs 07:0034 flights11.1%
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 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 4 points worse at 85.6%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
DL 2481 next to DTW to CLT
Every carrier on DTW to CLT combined arrived on time 83.3% of the time across 3,476 flights, so DL 2481 is 2 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,341 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.9% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 5 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2481thin sample | 305 | 85.6% | 68 min | 1.64% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–CLT | 1,341 | 81.9% | 70 min | 1.64% | B |
| All carriers on DTW–CLT | 3,476 | 83.3% | 90 min | 1.81% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2481 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 2481 held fairly steady: 85.1% in Oct–Dec 2025, 83.5% in Jan–Mar 2026, 87.3% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 81.6% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202526 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202575 flights85.1%
- Jan–Mar 202681 flights83.5%
- Apr–Jun 202674 flights87.3%
- Jul–Sep 202649 flights81.6%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2481 did best on Wednesday at 93.9% on time and worst on Sunday at 77.1%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2481 runs when it is late
DL 2481 often beats the schedule: 145 of 299 completed flights, 48%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 43 late arrivals split 14 under half an hour, 13 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 16 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early145 flights48.5%
- Within 15 min111 flights37.1%
- 15–29 min late14 flights4.7%
- 30–59 min late13 flights4.3%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights3.0%
- 2+ hours late7 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 299 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 29 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 1 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 15 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 CLT.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2481
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 April 2026, 4 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 April 2026 | 4 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 August 2026 | 4 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 December 2025 | 3 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 July 2026 | 3 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 August 2026 | 2 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 2481 runs late
Carrier accounts for 70% of the 2,939 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 70%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 9%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 70%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,061 of the 2,939 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,939 delay minutes reported on DL 2481.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
5.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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.
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. 305 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 85.6% on time with 1.64% cancelled over 305 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to CLT, every carrier and departure
- CLT to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2352 on the same route74.8%
- Delta Air Lines 1429 on the same route83.6%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) 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
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
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.