Flight number record
DL 2604
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to New York
- Route
- DTW → LGA
- Departs
- 17:59
- Flights
- 299
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 299 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 2604 runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 183 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 285 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.68%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
18.6%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 299 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
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 94 of 299 flights, with 17:55 (46 flights) and 17:40 (42 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 17:5994 flights31.4%
- Departs 17:5546 flights15.4%
- Departs 17:4042 flights14.0%
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 17:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and DL 2604 runs 9 points worse at 59.3%. 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 2604 next to DTW to LGA
Every carrier on DTW to LGA combined arrived on time 75.4% of the time across 4,011 flights, so DL 2604 is 16 points behind it. Delta flew 1,979 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.3% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 22 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2604thin sample | 299 | 59.3% | 77 min | 4.68% | D− |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–LGA | 1,979 | 77.3% | 69 min | 3.49% | B− |
| All carriers on DTW–LGA | 4,011 | 75.4% | 75 min | 5.11% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | 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 202578 flights64.0%
- Oct–Dec 202569 flights39.4%
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights66.7%
- Apr–Jun 202678 flights65.3%
Scale runs 30% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2604 did best on Tuesday at 69.4% on time and worst on Wednesday at 54.2%. 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 2604 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 50% of the 8,944 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.
- 50%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
50% 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 4,502 minutes out of 8,944, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,944 delay minutes reported on DL 2604.
Cancellations run at 4.68%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 18.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. 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 299 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. 299 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: 4.68% of its 299 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 route86.0%
- Delta Air Lines 2602 on the same route75.4%
- Delta Air Lines 2603 on the same route73.5%
- Delta Air Lines 1487 on the same route90.7%
- Republic Airways 4477 on the same route84.9%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.