Carrier route record
DLALB→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Albany to Detroit
- Flights
- 303
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on ALB to DTW 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.5 hours. That rests on 303 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's ALB to DTW record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 145 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
92.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 302 completed flights
Avg delay
147 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.33%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.2%
Every carrier on ALB to DTW, 1,099 flights
These figures cover 303 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on ALB to DTW
Delta flew 303 of the 1,099 flights on ALB to DTW, about 28% of it. Its 92.1% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 92.1% to SkyWest at 79.8%.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample | 303 | 92.1% | 147 min | 0.33% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 796 | 79.8% | 119 min | 2.14% | B |
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 303 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's ALB to DTW record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 92.1% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Delta on ALB to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 74.2% on time, against 100.0% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. May was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 95.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 86.0%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 72% of the 3,538 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.
- 72%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 7%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,538 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, 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 2,549 of the 3,538 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.33%, 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 stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% 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.
At 489 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.1% on time across 303 flights, 16 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 16 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 303 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 Delta on ALB to DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 303 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 92.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 302 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.