Flight number record

DL 442

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to San Francisco

Route: DTW → SFO
Departs: 15:50
Flights: 350
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 442, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 442 draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 350 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 442 runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 120 extra late arrivals.

On time

65.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 349 completed flights

Avg delay

49 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.29%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 350 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Schedule

When DL 442 flies

DL 442 flies DTW to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:50, used on 97 of 350 flights, with 16:20 (91 flights) and 16:59 (56 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:5097 flights27.7%
Departs 16:2091 flights26.0%
Departs 16:5956 flights16.0%

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 15:50 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 442 runs 7 points worse at 65.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 442 next to DTW to SFO

Every carrier on DTW to SFO combined arrived on time 67.7% of the time across 1,799 flights, so DL 442 is 2 points behind it. Delta flew 1,388 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 66.5% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 16 points.

DL 442 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 442thin sample	350	65.6%	49 min	0.29%	C+
All Delta Air Lines on DTW–SFO	1,388	66.5%	63 min	0.79%	C+
All carriers on DTW–SFO	1,799	67.7%	66 min	0.89%	C+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 442 quarter by quarter

DL 442 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 75.8% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 52.2%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 88 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 202591 flights75.8%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights68.4%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights66.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights52.2%

Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 442 did best on Tuesday at 82.4% on time and worst on Monday at 56.9%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 26 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 442 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 51% of the 5,826 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.

National Airspace System
51%
Carrier
35%
Late-arriving aircraft
8%
Extreme weather
5%
Security
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 2,027 of the 5,826 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,826 delay minutes reported on DL 442.

Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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

7.4% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 2,079 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

Every one of the 350 flights under DL 442 in the data flew DTW to SFO. 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. 350 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 442

For a booking, read DL 442 as 65.6% on time with 0.29% cancelled over 350 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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