Flight number record
DL 2968
Delta Air Lines · Philadelphia to Detroit
- Route
- PHL → DTW
- Departs
- 09:46
- Flights
- 340
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 2968, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 2968 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 50 minutes. That rests on 340 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 2968's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 112 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 331 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.65%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 340 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 16 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Schedule
When DL 2968 flies
DL 2968 flies PHL to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:46, used on 89 of 340 flights, with 09:40 (75 flights) and 09:39 (49 flights) next.
- Departs 09:4689 flights26.2%
- Departs 09:4075 flights22.1%
- Departs 09:3949 flights14.4%
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 09:46 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 2968 runs 5 points better at 88.5%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
DL 2968 next to PHL to DTW
Every carrier on PHL to DTW combined arrived on time 79.1% of the time across 3,000 flights, so DL 2968 is 9 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,582 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.3% 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 2968thin sample | 340 | 88.5% | 49 min | 2.65% | A |
| All Delta Air Lines on PHL–DTW | 1,582 | 82.3% | 106 min | 2.47% | B |
| All carriers on PHL–DTW | 3,000 | 79.1% | 99 min | 3.90% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 2968 quarter by quarter
DL 2968 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 82.8%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 68 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 202530 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202577 flights85.3%
- Jan–Mar 202682 flights84.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights95.6%
- Jul–Sep 202660 flights82.8%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 2968 ranged from 84.8% on Friday to 92.0% on Wednesday. With about 49 flights behind each day, a spread of 7 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 2968 runs when it is late
DL 2968 often beats the schedule: 178 of 331 completed flights, 54%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 38 late arrivals split 16 under half an hour, 13 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 9 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early178 flights53.8%
- Within 15 min115 flights34.7%
- 15–29 min late16 flights4.8%
- 30–59 min late13 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late7 flights2.1%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 331 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 38 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 8 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 2968
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 December 2025, 3 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 December 2025 | 3 hours 33 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 August 2026 | 2 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 December 2025 | 1 hour 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 May 2026 | 1 hour 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 July 2026 | 1 hour 32 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 2968 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 64% of the 1,859 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 64%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 7%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
64% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,859 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 to one. The split is drawn from 1,859 delay minutes reported on DL 2968.
Cancellations run at 2.65%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.7% 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.
DL 2968 is not only a PHL to DTW flight. It also flew DTW to PHL (340 flights, 88.5% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 340 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DTW to PHLthin sample | 340 | 88.5% | 56 min | 2.94% | A |
What to do with this
Booking DL 2968
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 2968: 2.65% of its 340 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs roughly 50 minutes, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to DTW, every carrier and departure
- DTW to PHL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1540 on the same route90.7%
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.