Flight number record

DL 728

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Seattle

Route: DTW → SEA
Departs: 12:20
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 728, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 728 lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

On time

78.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.82%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 728 flies

DL 728 flies DTW to SEA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:20, used on 98 of 364 flights, with 12:43 (40 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 12:2098 flights26.9%
Departs 12:4340 flights11.0%

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 12:20 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and DL 728 runs level with that at 78.9%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 728 next to DTW to SEA

Every carrier on DTW to SEA combined arrived on time 73.2% of the time across 2,076 flights, so DL 728 is 6 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,535 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 72.6% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 3 points.

DL 728 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 728thin sample	364	78.9%	50 min	0.82%	B+
All Delta Air Lines on DTW–SEA	1,535	72.6%	55 min	1.04%	C
All carriers on DTW–SEA	2,076	73.2%	54 min	0.87%	C+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 728 quarter by quarter

DL 728 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 63.7%, a swing of 30 points on roughly 91 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 flights93.4%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights63.7%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights70.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights87.9%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 728 did best on Tuesday at 86.8% on time and worst on Monday at 73.1%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 728 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 3,802 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
43%
National Airspace System
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
20%
Extreme weather
1%

36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,375 minutes out of 3,802, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,802 delay minutes reported on DL 728.

Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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 4.7% 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 1,927 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 364 flights under DL 728 in the data flew DTW to SEA. 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. 364 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 728

For a booking, read DL 728 as 78.9% on time with 0.82% cancelled over 364 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