Flight number record

DL 2638

Delta Air Lines · Miami to Detroit

Route: MIA → DTW
Departs: 08:05
Flights: 311
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2638, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2638 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 311 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2638's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 124 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 310 completed flights

Avg delay

79 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.32%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 311 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 2638 flies

DL 2638 flies MIA to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:05, used on 86 of 311 flights, with 08:10 (73 flights) and 08:11 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:0586 flights27.7%
Departs 08:1073 flights23.5%
Departs 08:1141 flights13.2%

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 08:05 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 2638 runs 6 points better at 90.0%. 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 2638 next to MIA to DTW

Every carrier on MIA to DTW combined arrived on time 72.9% of the time across 1,813 flights, so DL 2638 is 17 points ahead of it. Delta flew 966 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.7% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

DL 2638 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2638thin sample	311	90.0%	79 min	0.32%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on MIA–DTW	966	77.7%	88 min	0.93%	B+
All carriers on MIA–DTW	1,813	72.9%	78 min	1.43%	C
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2638 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 2638 held fairly steady: 92.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 85.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 91.1% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91.9% 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 flights92.4%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights85.7%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights91.1%
Apr–Jun 202637 flights91.9%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2638 ranged from 86.4% on Friday to 95.6% on Thursday. With about 44 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.

Delay causes

Why DL 2638 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 89% of the 2,455 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
89%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
3%

The largest share of delay minutes, 89%, 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 2,190 of the 2,455 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,455 delay minutes reported on DL 2638.

Cancellations are rare at 0.32%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.2% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,145 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 311 flights under DL 2638 in the data flew MIA 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. 311 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 2638

For a booking, DL 2638 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 90.0% on time and 0.32% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

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