Flight number record

DL 2578

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Austin

Route: DTW → AUS
Departs: 20:00
Flights: 300
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2578, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2578 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 300 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

On time

74.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 294 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 300 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 2578 flies

DL 2578 flies DTW to AUS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:00, used on 48 of 300 flights, with 19:45 (37 flights) and 19:55 (34 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 20:0048 flights16.0%
Departs 19:4537 flights12.3%
Departs 19:5534 flights11.3%

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 20:00 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 2578 runs 4 points better at 74.5%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

DL 2578 next to DTW to AUS

Every carrier on DTW to AUS combined arrived on time 79.8% of the time across 1,334 flights, so DL 2578 is 5 points behind it. Delta flew 1,283 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 7 points.

DL 2578 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2578thin sample	300	74.5%	58 min	2.00%	C
All Delta Air Lines on DTW–AUS	1,283	79.6%	52 min	1.25%	B
All carriers on DTW–AUS	1,334	79.8%	53 min	1.20%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2578 quarter by quarter

DL 2578 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 86.4% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 64.7%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 75 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 202578 flights67.9%
Oct–Dec 202587 flights83.9%
Jan–Mar 202646 flights86.4%
Apr–Jun 202689 flights64.7%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2578 did best on Tuesday at 81.8% on time and worst on Monday at 59.1%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 23 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2578 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 4,330 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
40%
National Airspace System
29%
Late-arriving aircraft
26%
Extreme weather
4%

The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 1,745 of the 4,330 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,330 delay minutes reported on DL 2578.

Cancellations sit at 2.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.1% 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 1,149 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 300 flights under DL 2578 in the data flew DTW to AUS. 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. 300 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 2578

For a booking, DL 2578 is one of the weaker ways to fly DTW to AUS: 5 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