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DelayAtlas

Flight number record

DL 2497

Delta Air Lines · San Antonio to Detroit

Route
SAT → DTW
Departs
05:10
Flights
365
Period
July 2025 to June 2026
AGRADE

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2497, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2497 earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 17 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2497's record is 17 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 174 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

Key figures

On time

95.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 361 completed flights

Avg delay

105 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 2497 flies

DL 2497 flies SAT to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 05:10, used on 116 of 365 flights, with 05:20 (105 flights) and 05:25 (58 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

  • Departs 05:10116 flights31.8%
  • Departs 05:20105 flights28.8%
  • Departs 05:2558 flights15.9%

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 05:10 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2497 runs 6 points better at 95.0%. 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 2497 next to SAT to DTW

Every carrier on SAT to DTW combined arrived on time 90.2% of the time across 951 flights, so DL 2497 is 5 points ahead of it. Delta flew 934 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 90.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 13 points.

DL 2497 against its route and carrier
Compared withFlightsOn timeAvg delayCancelledGrade
DL 249736595.0%105 min1.10%A
All Delta Air Lines on SAT–DTW93490.2%72 min0.75%A+
All carriers on SAT–DTW95190.2%75 min0.74%A+
Delta Air Lines, whole network1,038,57081.6%71 min1.62%B

Across the year

DL 2497 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 2497 held fairly steady: 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 97.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 90.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 94.4% 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 flights96.7%
  • Oct–Dec 202592 flights97.8%
  • Jan–Mar 202690 flights90.9%
  • Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.4%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2497 ranged from 88.5% on Thursday to 100.0% on Wednesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 12 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

On-time rate by day of the week94.2Mon94.1Tue100.0Wed88.5Thu96.2Fri96.2Sat96.1Sun
Monday: 94.2 percent on time. Tuesday: 94.1 percent on time. Wednesday: 100.0 percent on time. Thursday: 88.5 percent on time. Friday: 96.2 percent on time. Saturday: 96.2 percent on time. Sunday: 96.1 percent on time

Delay causes

Why DL 2497 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 88% of the 1,881 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
    88%
  • National Airspace System
    11%
  • Extreme weather
    1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 88%, 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 1,647 of the 1,881 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,881 delay minutes reported on DL 2497.

Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.2% 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 1,214 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 2497 in the data flew SAT to DTW. 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 2497

For a booking, DL 2497 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 95.0% on time and 1.10% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

Related

Where to go next

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.