Flight number record
DL 2604
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to New York
- Route
- DTW → LGA
- Departs
- 17:59
- Flights
- 300
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2604, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2604 draws a D−. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 300 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so DL 2604 runs 19 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 186 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
58.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 286 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.67%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
19.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 300 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When DL 2604 flies
DL 2604 flies DTW to LGA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:59, used on 88 of 300 flights, with 17:55 (53 flights) and 17:40 (42 flights) next.
- Departs 17:5988 flights29.3%
- Departs 17:5553 flights17.7%
- Departs 17:4042 flights14.0%
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 17:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 2604 runs 9 points worse at 58.7%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
DL 2604 next to DTW to LGA
Every carrier on DTW to LGA combined arrived on time 74.7% of the time across 3,862 flights, so DL 2604 is 16 points behind it. Delta flew 1,981 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 22 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2604thin sample | 300 | 58.7% | 80 min | 4.67% | D− |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–LGA | 1,981 | 76.4% | 74 min | 4.04% | B− |
| All carriers on DTW–LGA | 3,862 | 74.7% | 76 min | 5.44% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2604 quarter by quarter
DL 2604 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 66.7% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 39.4%, a swing of 27 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 202526 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202569 flights39.4%
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights66.7%
- Apr–Jun 202678 flights65.3%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights58.0%
Scale runs 30% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2604 ranged from 55.1% on Wednesday to 64.6% on Tuesday. With about 43 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2604 runs when it is late
The 118 late arrivals split 31 under half an hour, 31 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 56 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early52 flights18.2%
- Within 15 min116 flights40.6%
- 15–29 min late31 flights10.8%
- 30–59 min late31 flights10.8%
- 1–2 hours late37 flights12.9%
- 2+ hours late19 flights6.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 286 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 102 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 8 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 24 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 LGA.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2604
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 August 2026, 6 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across August, July, May, November and September, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 August 2026 | 6 hours 5 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 9 July 2026 | 6 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 May 2026 | 5 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 November 2025 | 4 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 September 2025 | 4 hours 34 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 2604 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 57% of the 9,406 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%National Airspace System
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
57% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 5,392 minutes out of 9,406, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,406 delay minutes reported on DL 2604.
Cancellations run at 4.67%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
19.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 502 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.
Every one of the 300 flights under DL 2604 in the data flew DTW to LGA. 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 2604
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 2604: 4.67% of its 300 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to LGA, every carrier and departure
- LGA to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2589 on the same route85.3%
- Delta Air Lines 2602 on the same route74.9%
- Delta Air Lines 2603 on the same route72.4%
- Delta Air Lines 1487 on the same route87.9%
- Republic Airways 4477 on the same route85.3%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.