Flight number record

DL 2898

Delta Air Lines · Buffalo to Detroit

Route: BUF → DTW
Departs: 06:20
Flights: 284
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2898, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 2898 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.3 hours. That rests on 284 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 2898's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 125 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 283 completed flights

Avg delay

140 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.35%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 284 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 2898 flies

DL 2898 flies BUF to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:20, used on 63 of 284 flights, with 06:15 (61 flights) and 06:30 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:2063 flights22.2%
Departs 06:1561 flights21.5%
Departs 06:3041 flights14.4%

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 06:20 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 2898 runs level with that at 90.1%. 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 2898 next to BUF to DTW

Every carrier on BUF to DTW combined arrived on time 81.5% of the time across 1,091 flights, so DL 2898 is 9 points ahead of it. Delta flew 443 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 9 points.

DL 2898 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 2898thin sample	284	90.1%	140 min	0.35%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on BUF–DTW	443	84.1%	108 min	1.81%	B
All carriers on BUF–DTW	1,091	81.5%	113 min	1.74%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 2898 quarter by quarter

DL 2898 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 83.1%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 95 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 flights93.5%
Oct–Dec 202577 flights83.1%
Jan–Mar 202624 flights—
Apr–Jun 202691 flights93.3%

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

By weekday, DL 2898 did best on Friday at 95.0% on time and worst on Thursday at 80.5%. Each day rests on about 41 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 2898 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 63% of the 3,906 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
63%
National Airspace System
28%
Late-arriving aircraft
9%

The largest share of delay minutes, 63%, 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 2,477 of the 3,906 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,906 delay minutes reported on DL 2898.

Cancellations are rare at 0.35%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including PWM to DTW (2), but none flew often enough under DL 2898 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to BUF to DTW only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 284 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 2898

For a booking, DL 2898 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 90.1% on time and 0.35% 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