Carrier route record
DLBUF→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Buffalo to Detroit
- Flights
- 443
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on BUF to DTW earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 443 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's BUF to DTW record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 431 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.71%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.7%
Every carrier on BUF to DTW, 1,294 flights
These figures cover 443 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on BUF to DTW
Delta flew 443 of the 1,294 flights on BUF to DTW, about 34% of it. Its 84.0% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.0% to SkyWest at 80.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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) | 443 | 84.0% | 91 min | 2.71% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 7 | 83.3% | 28 min | 14.29% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 844 | 80.5% | 106 min | 1.42% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on BUF to DTW
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 443 flights.
- 5am–8am362 flights84.5%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm21 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm60 flights82.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5am–8am window is the strongest at 84.5% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.
Across the year
Delta on BUF to DTW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights100.0%
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights78.7%
- Jan–Mar 2026150 flights76.4%
- Apr–Jun 2026112 flights90.9%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights89.7%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 84.0% on time across 443 flights.
Delta on BUF to DTW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 100.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 76.4%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 89 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.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 76.6%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on BUF to DTW runs when it is late
Delta on BUF to DTW often beats the schedule: 140 of 431 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 69 late arrivals split 30 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 27 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early140 flights32.5%
- Within 15 min222 flights51.5%
- 15–29 min late30 flights7.0%
- 30–59 min late12 flights2.8%
- 1–2 hours late14 flights3.2%
- 2+ hours late13 flights3.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 431 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
10 of 58 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 21 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on BUF to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 June 2026, 11 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 June 2026 | 11 hours 33 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 31 December 2025 | 11 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 December 2025 | 9 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 January 2026 | 5 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 February 2026 | 4 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 53% of the 6,296 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,352 of the 6,296 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,296 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.71%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.3% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 241 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 78.0% on time across 443 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 443 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 BUF to DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 443 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 84.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 431 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.