Flight number record
DL 852
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Los Angeles
- Route
- DTW → LAX
- Departs
- 18:20
- Flights
- 256
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 852, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 852 lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 256 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
79.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 253 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.17%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
6.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 256 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 852 flies
DL 852 flies DTW to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:20, used on 89 of 256 flights, with 18:30 (58 flights) and 18:50 (41 flights) next.
- Departs 18:2089 flights34.8%
- Departs 18:3058 flights22.7%
- Departs 18:5041 flights16.0%
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 18:20 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and DL 852 runs 11 points better at 79.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
DL 852 next to DTW to LAX
Every carrier on DTW to LAX combined arrived on time 75.8% of the time across 2,361 flights, so DL 852 is 4 points ahead of it. Delta flew 1,954 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.8% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight trails by 2 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 852thin sample | 256 | 79.4% | 56 min | 1.17% | B |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–LAX | 1,954 | 75.8% | 58 min | 0.92% | B+ |
| All carriers on DTW–LAX | 2,361 | 75.8% | 59 min | 1.06% | B |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 852 quarter by quarter
DL 852 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 70.5%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 64 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 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202578 flights81.8%
- Jan–Mar 202621 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202665 flights81.5%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights70.5%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 852 did best on Thursday at 86.5% on time and worst on Sunday at 73.0%. Each day rests on about 37 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late DL 852 runs when it is late
The 52 late arrivals split 24 under half an hour, 11 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 17 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early61 flights24.1%
- Within 15 min140 flights55.3%
- 15–29 min late24 flights9.5%
- 30–59 min late11 flights4.3%
- 1–2 hours late11 flights4.3%
- 2+ hours late6 flights2.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 253 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 51 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. In the other direction, 14 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at LAX.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 852
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 June 2026, 3 hours 58 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 14 June 2026 | 3 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 August 2026 | 2 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 October 2025 | 2 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 March 2026 | 2 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 June 2026 | 2 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 852 runs late
Carrier accounts for 73% of the 2,910 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 73%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 73%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,120 of the 2,910 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,910 delay minutes reported on DL 852.
Cancellations sit at 1.17% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
6.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 three other city pairs in the data, including IAH to DTW (62), ATL to DTW (24) and ATL to CLT (16), but none flew often enough under DL 852 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DTW to LAX only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 256 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 852
For a booking, read DL 852 as 79.4% on time with 1.17% cancelled over 256 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 883 on the same route76.5%
- Delta Air Lines 694 on the same route64.2%
- Delta Air Lines 634 on the same route81.3%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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.