Flight number record
DL 2852
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Tampa
- Route
- DTW → TPA
- Departs
- 07:00
- Flights
- 255
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2852, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2852 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 55 minutes. That rests on 255 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2852's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 107 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 249 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.96%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.2%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 255 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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Schedule
When DL 2852 flies
DL 2852 flies DTW to TPA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 141 of 255 flights, with 07:05 (98 flights) next.
- Departs 07:00141 flights55.3%
- Departs 07:0598 flights38.4%
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 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2852 runs level with that at 88.0%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
DL 2852 next to DTW to TPA
Every carrier on DTW to TPA combined arrived on time 78.7% of the time across 2,290 flights, so DL 2852 is 9 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,716 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 2852thin sample | 255 | 88.0% | 54 min | 1.96% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–TPA | 1,716 | 81.5% | 63 min | 1.22% | B |
| All carriers on DTW–TPA | 2,290 | 78.7% | 65 min | 1.88% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2852 quarter by quarter
DL 2852 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 96.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 77.5%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 85 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.
- Oct–Dec 202512 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights77.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights96.6%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights95.0%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 2852 ranged from 82.9% on Thursday to 94.3% on Tuesday. With about 36 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2852 runs when it is late
DL 2852 often beats the schedule: 78 of 249 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 30 late arrivals split 11 under half an hour, 11 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 8 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early78 flights31.3%
- Within 15 min141 flights56.6%
- 15–29 min late11 flights4.4%
- 30–59 min late11 flights4.4%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights2.0%
- 2+ hours late3 flights1.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 249 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 19 of 249 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2852
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 May 2026, 3 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 May 2026 | 3 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 March 2026 | 3 hours 1 minute | Carrier |
| 15 January 2026 | 2 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 March 2026 | 1 hour 51 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 January 2026 | 1 hour 20 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why DL 2852 runs late
Carrier accounts for 58% of the 1,606 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Carrier
- 38%National Airspace System
- 3%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
38% 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 605 minutes out of 1,606, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,606 delay minutes reported on DL 2852.
Cancellations sit at 1.96% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.39%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 983 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.
The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including TPA to DTW (193) and CHA to DTW (1), but none flew often enough under DL 2852 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DTW to TPA only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 255 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 2852
For a booking, read DL 2852 as 88.0% on time with 1.96% cancelled over 255 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to TPA, every carrier and departure
- TPA to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1355 on the same route76.9%
- Delta Air Lines 1243 on the same route81.0%
- Delta Air Lines 2587 on the same route79.8%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.