Flight number record
DL 494
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Detroit
- Route
- LAX → DTW
- Departs
- 09:45
- Flights
- 348
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 494's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 125 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 343 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.57%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 348 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Schedule
When DL 494 flies
DL 494 flies LAX to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:45, used on 91 of 348 flights, with 08:00 (62 flights) next.
- Departs 09:4591 flights26.1%
- Departs 08:0062 flights17.8%
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 09:45 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, 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.
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Against the route
DL 494 next to LAX to DTW
Every carrier on LAX to DTW combined arrived on time 82.2% of the time across 2,364 flights, so DL 494 is 8 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,955 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 9 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 494thin sample | 348 | 89.8% | 78 min | 0.57% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on LAX–DTW | 1,955 | 83.2% | 66 min | 0.92% | B+ |
| All carriers on LAX–DTW | 2,364 | 82.2% | 69 min | 1.23% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 494 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 494 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 94.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 89.3% in Jan–Mar 2026, 86.5% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 86.9% in Jul–Sep 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 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202579 flights94.9%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights89.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.5%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights86.9%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 494 ranged from 85.7% on Monday 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.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 494 runs when it is late
DL 494 often beats the schedule: 126 of 343 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 35 late arrivals split 10 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 13 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early126 flights36.7%
- Within 15 min182 flights53.1%
- 15–29 min late10 flights2.9%
- 30–59 min late12 flights3.5%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights2.6%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 343 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
9 of 36 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. 8 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 494
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 January 2026, 8 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 January 2026 | 8 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 June 2026 | 6 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 August 2026 | 3 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 April 2026 | 2 hours 17 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 February 2026 | 1 hour 59 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 494 runs late
Carrier accounts for 60% of the 2,724 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,646 of the 2,724 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,724 delay minutes reported on DL 494.
Cancellations are rare at 0.57%, below the national 1.89% 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 8.3% 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.
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.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to DTW, every carrier and departure
- DTW to LAX, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 802 on the same route75.3%
- Delta Air Lines 708 on the same route81.8%
- Delta Air Lines 407 on the same route76.9%
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.