Carrier route record

DLBWI→DTW

Delta Air Lines · Baltimore to Detroit

Flights: 1,204
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 53%
Carriers: 5

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

Delta on BWI to DTW 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,204 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's BWI to DTW record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 92 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,184 completed flights

Avg delay

103 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.66%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.7%

Every carrier on BWI to DTW, 2,257 flights

These figures cover 1,204 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 BWI to DTW

Delta flew 1,204 of the 2,257 flights on BWI to DTW, most of the route. Its 86.8% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 92.3% to Frontier at 73.1%. Three 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.

On-time performance by carrier on BWI to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	14	92.3%	17 min	7.14%	A−
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,204	86.8%	103 min	1.66%	A
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	106	77.1%	104 min	0.94%	B+
Southwest Airlines	785	75.8%	57 min	1.91%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	148	73.1%	66 min	2.03%	C

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on BWI to DTW

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am365 flights94.1%
8am–11am188 flights83.9%
11am–2pm292 flights88.2%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm359 flights79.9%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.1% of the time, against 79.9% for the evening window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on BWI to DTW through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, December worst

December is the weak month at 72.1% on time, against 97.4% in October. 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 118 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.7%. 8 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 45% of the 16,000 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.

Carrier
45%
Late-arriving aircraft
44%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
0%

44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 16,038 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 7,207 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.66% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.6% 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 409 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 81.9% on time across 1,204 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,204 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on BWI to DTW

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 97.4% on time and December 72.1%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,184 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures