Flight number record

DL 788

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to San Antonio

Route: DTW → SAT
Departs: 08:25
Flights: 340
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 788, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 788 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 340 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, DL 788's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 102 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 337 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.59%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 340 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 788 flies

DL 788 flies DTW to SAT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:25, used on 156 of 340 flights, with 08:52 (36 flights) and 08:45 (34 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:25156 flights45.9%
Departs 08:5236 flights10.6%
Departs 08:4534 flights10.0%

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 08:25 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and DL 788 runs 4 points better at 87.8%. 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 788 next to DTW to SAT

Every carrier on DTW to SAT combined arrived on time 80.1% of the time across 951 flights, so DL 788 is 8 points ahead of it. Delta flew 934 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.0% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight beats by 6 points.

DL 788 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 788thin sample	340	87.8%	60 min	0.59%	A+
All Delta Air Lines on DTW–SAT	934	80.0%	58 min	0.75%	B+
All carriers on DTW–SAT	951	80.1%	59 min	0.74%	B+
Delta Air Lines, whole network	1,038,570	81.6%	71 min	1.62%	B

Across the year

DL 788 quarter by quarter

DL 788 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 96.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 80.3%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 85 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 202589 flights93.2%
Oct–Dec 202576 flights80.3%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights81.1%
Apr–Jun 202685 flights96.4%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 788 ranged from 82.4% on Saturday to 94.2% on Tuesday. With about 49 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.

Delay causes

Why DL 788 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 55% of the 2,467 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
55%
National Airspace System
27%
Late-arriving aircraft
12%
Extreme weather
5%

The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, 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 1,354 of the 2,467 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,467 delay minutes reported on DL 788.

Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, 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 3.6% 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.

The 1,214 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including SAT to DTW (226), but none flew often enough under DL 788 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DTW to SAT only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 340 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 788

For a booking, DL 788 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 87.8% on time and 0.59% 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