Flight number record

DL 494

Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Detroit

Route: LAX → DTW
Departs: 08:00
Flights: 348
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 494, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 494 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 12 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 348 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 494's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 122 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.57%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 348 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 494 flies

DL 494 flies LAX to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:00, used on 62 of 348 flights, with 09:45 (58 flights) and 09:05 (52 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:0062 flights17.8%
Departs 09:4558 flights16.7%
Departs 09:0552 flights14.9%

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 08:00 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 494 runs 6 points better at 89.8%. 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 494 next to LAX to DTW

Every carrier on LAX to DTW combined arrived on time 82.7% of the time across 2,528 flights, so DL 494 is 7 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,979 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

DL 494 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 494thin sample	348	89.8%	76 min	0.57%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on LAX–DTW	1,979	83.6%	62 min	0.76%	B+
All carriers on LAX–DTW	2,528	82.7%	68 min	1.03%	B
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 494 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter DL 494 held fairly steady: 89.1% in Jul–Sep 2025, 94.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 89.3% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 86.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights89.1%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights94.9%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights89.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.5%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 494 ranged from 85.7% on Thursday to 93.9% on Friday. With about 50 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why DL 494 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 2,660 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
56%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
National Airspace System
12%

The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, 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 1,486 of the 2,660 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,660 delay minutes reported on DL 494.

Cancellations are rare at 0.57%, 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 3.8% 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.

At 1,979 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.

The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including SFO to DTW (9), but none flew often enough under DL 494 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to LAX to DTW only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 348 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 494

For a booking, DL 494 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 89.8% on time and 0.57% 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