Flight number record

DL 944

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Seattle

Route: DTW → SEA
Departs: 15:55
Flights: 327
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 944, check with Delta Air Lines.

DL 944 draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 45 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 327 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 944 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 100 extra late arrivals.

On time

67.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 324 completed flights

Avg delay

45 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.92%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 327 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Schedule

When DL 944 flies

DL 944 flies DTW to SEA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:55, used on 71 of 327 flights, with 16:25 (50 flights) and 16:32 (38 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:5571 flights21.7%
Departs 16:2550 flights15.3%
Departs 16:3238 flights11.6%

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 15:55 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 944 runs 5 points worse at 67.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

DL 944 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 944 is 6 points behind 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 14 points.

DL 944 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
DL 944thin sample	327	67.6%	45 min	0.92%	C+
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 944 quarter by quarter

DL 944 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 80.9% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 38.5%, a swing of 42 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 202592 flights80.9%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights68.5%
Jan–Mar 202652 flights38.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights70.3%

Scale runs 30% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, DL 944 did best on Thursday at 76.6% on time and worst on Sunday at 58.7%. Each day rests on about 47 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why DL 944 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 4,707 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
42%
National Airspace System
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
15%
Extreme weather
7%

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 1,956 of the 4,707 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,707 delay minutes reported on DL 944.

Cancellations sit at 0.92% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

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.

The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including DCA to SEA (38), but none flew often enough under DL 944 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DTW to SEA 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 944

For a booking, DL 944 is one of the weaker ways to fly DTW to SEA: 6 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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