Carrier route record
DLCLT→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Charlotte to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,344
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on CLT 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,344 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's CLT to DTW record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 105 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,324 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.34%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.2%
Every carrier on CLT to DTW, 3,535 flights
These figures cover 1,344 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 CLT to DTW
Delta flew 1,344 of the 3,535 flights on CLT to DTW, about 38% of it. Its 88.1% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to Spirit at 73.8%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,344 | 88.1% | 84 min | 1.34% | A |
| American Airlines | 2,074 | 78.9% | 71 min | 1.78% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 75.9% | 70 min | 3.33% | B− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 86 | 73.8% | 74 min | 2.33% | C |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on CLT 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 13 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–8am361 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am294 flights90.7%
- 11am–2pm344 flights85.5%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm345 flights81.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.7% of the time, against 81.5% for the evening window. That is 13 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 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on CLT to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 80.2% on time, against 95.7% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 92.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 85.1%. 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 13,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
52% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 13,296 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 4,882 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.34% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.4% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 500 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.3% on time across 1,345 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,344 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 CLT to DTW
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 95.7% on time and December 80.2%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,324 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to DTW, every carrier
- Delta on DTW to CLT, the return leg
- American Airlines on CLT to DTW78.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.