Flight number record
DL 788
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to San Antonio
- Route
- DTW → SAT
- Departs
- 08:25
- Flights
- 327
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 327 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 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 104 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 324 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.61%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 327 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 151 of 327 flights, with 08:52 (36 flights) and 08:45 (34 flights) next.
- Departs 08:25151 flights46.2%
- Departs 08:5236 flights11.0%
- Departs 08:4534 flights10.4%
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 08:25 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and DL 788 runs 4 points better at 87.7%. 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 788 next to DTW to SAT
Every carrier on DTW to SAT combined arrived on time 80.4% of the time across 934 flights, so DL 788 is 7 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 788thin sample | 327 | 87.7% | 60 min | 0.61% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–SAT | 934 | 80.4% | 56 min | 0.75% | B+ |
| All carriers on DTW–SAT | 934 | 80.4% | 56 min | 0.75% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | 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 82 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 202527 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202576 flights80.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights81.1%
- Apr–Jun 202685 flights96.4%
- Jul–Sep 202649 flights93.8%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 788 ranged from 84.0% on Thursday to 94.1% on Tuesday. With about 47 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 788 runs when it is late
DL 788 often beats the schedule: 154 of 324 completed flights, 48%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 40 late arrivals split 15 under half an hour, 13 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early154 flights47.5%
- Within 15 min130 flights40.1%
- 15–29 min late15 flights4.6%
- 30–59 min late13 flights4.0%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights1.9%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 324 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
10 of 36 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 788
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 January 2026, 6 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 January 2026 | 6 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 January 2026 | 2 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 March 2026 | 2 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 November 2025 | 2 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 December 2025 | 2 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 788 runs late
Carrier accounts for 52% of the 2,417 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,259 of the 2,417 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,417 delay minutes reported on DL 788.
Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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 3.7% 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.
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.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including SAT to DTW (222), 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. 327 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: 87.7% on time and 0.61% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to SAT, every carrier and departure
- SAT to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1365 on the same route70.7%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- San Antonio International (SAT) 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.