Carrier route record
DLBUF→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Buffalo to Detroit
- Flights
- 443
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. 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 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 65 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 435 completed flights
Avg delay
108 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.5%
Every carrier on BUF to DTW, 1,091 flights
These figures cover 443 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on BUF to DTW
Delta flew 443 of the 1,091 flights on BUF to DTW, about 41% of it. Its 84.1% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.1% to SkyWest at 79.7%. 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 | 84.1% | 108 min | 1.81% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 7 | 83.3% | 28 min | 14.29% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 641 | 79.7% | 116 min | 1.56% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on BUF to DTW
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 flights84.6%
- 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 84.6% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.
Across the year
Delta on BUF to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 58.1% on time, against 100.0% in September. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 56 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 75.0%. 16 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 56% of the 7,460 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.
- 56%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, 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 4,201 of the 7,460 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,460 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.81% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.9% 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 close to two hours, 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 78.1% 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 84.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 435 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.