Flight number record

DL 2839

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Raleigh

Route: DTW → RDU
Departs: 21:35
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2839, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2839 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 364 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

On time

74.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

8.3%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 2839 flies

DL 2839 flies DTW to RDU without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:35, used on 70 of 364 flights, with 21:59 (51 flights) and 21:45 (44 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:3570 flights19.2%
Departs 21:5951 flights14.0%
Departs 21:4544 flights12.1%

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 21:35 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and DL 2839 runs 4 points better at 74.2%. 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 2839 next to DTW to RDU

Every carrier on DTW to RDU combined arrived on time 83.8% of the time across 1,525 flights, so DL 2839 is 10 points behind it. Delta flew 1,337 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 7 points.

DL 2839 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2839thin sample	364	74.2%	68 min	1.10%	C
All Delta Air Lines on DTW–RDU	1,337	84.2%	63 min	1.20%	B
All carriers on DTW–RDU	1,525	83.8%	63 min	1.31%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2839 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 2839 held fairly steady: 72.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 71.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 77.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 75.6% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights72.8%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights71.4%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights77.0%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights75.6%

Scale runs 65% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2839 did best on Friday at 78.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 60.8%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2839 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 58% of the 6,283 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
58%
Late-arriving aircraft
24%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, 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 3,649 of the 6,283 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,283 delay minutes reported on DL 2839.

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

8.3% 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 501 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 364 flights under DL 2839 in the data flew DTW to RDU. 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. 364 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 2839

For a booking, DL 2839 is one of the weaker ways to fly DTW to RDU: 10 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