Flight number record

DL 2856

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Atlanta

Route: DTW → ATL
Departs: 10:35
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2856, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2856 earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 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 365 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2856's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 87 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 364 completed flights

Avg delay

69 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.27%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Schedule

When DL 2856 flies

DL 2856 flies DTW to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:35, used on 106 of 365 flights, with 10:31 (59 flights) and 10:28 (56 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:35106 flights29.0%
Departs 10:3159 flights16.2%
Departs 10:2856 flights15.3%

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 10:35 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 2856 runs 2 points better at 86.3%. 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 2856 next to DTW to ATL

Every carrier on DTW to ATL combined arrived on time 79.0% of the time across 4,881 flights, so DL 2856 is 7 points ahead of it. Delta flew 3,703 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 5 points.

DL 2856 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2856	365	86.3%	69 min	0.27%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on DTW–ATL	3,703	81.6%	68 min	0.49%	B+
All carriers on DTW–ATL	4,881	79.0%	75 min	0.80%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2856 quarter by quarter

DL 2856 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 92.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 78.7%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 91 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 202592 flights88.0%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights85.9%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights78.7%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.3%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 2856 did best on Thursday at 92.3% on time and worst on Monday at 78.8%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2856 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 51% of the 3,455 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
51%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 1,748 of the 3,455 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,455 delay minutes reported on DL 2856.

Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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

5.8% 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 594 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 365 flights under DL 2856 in the data flew DTW to ATL. 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. 365 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 2856

For a booking, DL 2856 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 86.3% on time and 0.27% 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