Flight number record
DL 965
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Atlanta
- Route
- DTW → ATL
- Departs
- 07:20
- Flights
- 322
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 965, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 965 earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 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 322 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, DL 965's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 93 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 320 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.62%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
5.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 322 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 965 flies
DL 965 flies DTW to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:20, used on 56 of 322 flights, with 08:05 (44 flights) and 08:30 (42 flights) next.
- Departs 07:2056 flights17.4%
- Departs 08:0544 flights13.7%
- Departs 08:3042 flights13.0%
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 07:20 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and DL 965 runs 3 points worse at 86.6%. 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 965 next to DTW to ATL
Every carrier on DTW to ATL combined arrived on time 78.9% of the time across 4,832 flights, so DL 965 is 8 points ahead of it. Delta flew 3,780 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.2% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.1%, which this flight beats by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 965thin sample | 322 | 86.6% | 77 min | 0.62% | A+ |
| All Delta Air Lines on DTW–ATL | 3,780 | 81.2% | 68 min | 0.48% | B+ |
| All carriers on DTW–ATL | 4,832 | 78.9% | 75 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,039,517 | 81.1% | 71 min | 1.74% | B |
Across the year
DL 965 quarter by quarter
DL 965 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 92.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 78.9%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 81 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 202526 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights78.9%
- Jan–Mar 202652 flights82.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.3%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights88.7%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 965 ranged from 80.9% on Sunday to 92.5% on Saturday. With about 46 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 965 runs when it is late
DL 965 often beats the schedule: 93 of 320 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 43 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 9 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 16 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early93 flights29.1%
- Within 15 min184 flights57.5%
- 15–29 min late18 flights5.6%
- 30–59 min late9 flights2.8%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights3.1%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 320 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 43 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for DL 965
The latest arrival of the period was on 31 October 2025, 7 hours 30 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 31 October 2025 | 7 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 December 2025 | 5 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 December 2025 | 5 hours 16 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 25 January 2026 | 4 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 November 2025 | 2 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why DL 965 runs late
Carrier accounts for 62% of the 3,307 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 10%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 62%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,036 of the 3,307 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,307 delay minutes reported on DL 965.
Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, 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
5.0% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 594 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 BOS to LGA (12), but none flew often enough under DL 965 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DTW to ATL only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 322 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 965
For a booking, DL 965 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 86.6% on time and 0.62% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to ATL, every carrier and departure
- ATL to DTW, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2856 on the same route86.5%
- Delta Air Lines 1611 on the same route87.2%
- Delta Air Lines 1467 on the same route76.2%
- Delta Air Lines 2375 on the same route91.2%
- Delta Air Lines 2053 on the same route72.4%
- Delta Air Lines 2188 on the same route67.2%
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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.