Flight number record
DL 772
Delta Air Lines · San Francisco to Detroit
- Route
- SFO → DTW
- Departs
- 05:50
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 772, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 772 earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 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 365 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 772's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 164 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 364 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Schedule
When DL 772 flies
DL 772 flies SFO to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 05:50, used on 170 of 365 flights, with 05:45 (62 flights) and 05:40 (57 flights) next.
- Departs 05:50170 flights46.6%
- Departs 05:4562 flights17.0%
- Departs 05:4057 flights15.6%
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 05:50 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 772 runs 4 points better at 93.7%. 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 772 next to SFO to DTW
Every carrier on SFO to DTW combined arrived on time 77.7% of the time across 1,791 flights, so DL 772 is 16 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,385 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.4% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 772 | 365 | 93.7% | 78 min | 0.27% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on SFO–DTW | 1,385 | 75.4% | 53 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| All carriers on SFO–DTW | 1,791 | 77.7% | 53 min | 0.61% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 772 quarter by quarter
DL 772 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 98.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 83.3%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 73 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 flights83.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights92.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights94.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.5%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights98.4%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, DL 772 ranged from 88.5% on Thursday to 100.0% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 12 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 772 runs when it is late
DL 772 often beats the schedule: 152 of 364 completed flights, 42%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 14 of the 23 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 7 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early152 flights41.8%
- Within 15 min189 flights51.9%
- 15–29 min late14 flights3.8%
- 30–59 min late2 flights0.5%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights0.8%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 364 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 14 of 364 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 772
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 December 2025, 8 hours 36 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 December 2025 | 8 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 September 2025 | 4 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 February 2026 | 3 hours 53 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 October 2025 | 2 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 December 2025 | 1 hour 38 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 772 runs late
Carrier accounts for 88% of the 1,790 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 88%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 88%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,568 of the 1,790 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,790 delay minutes reported on DL 772.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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 1.9% 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 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 365 flights under DL 772 in the data flew SFO to DTW. 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. 365 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 772
For a booking, DL 772 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 93.7% on time and 0.27% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to DTW, every carrier and departure
- DTW to SFO, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 335 on the same route71.5%
- Delta Air Lines 361 on the same route75.6%
- San Francisco International (SFO) 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.