Carrier route record
DLDEN→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Denver to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,247
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DEN 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,247 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 726 at 80.5% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DEN to DTW record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 95 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,242 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.32%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.1%
Every carrier on DEN to DTW, 3,109 flights
These figures cover 1,247 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 DEN to DTW
Delta flew 1,247 of the 3,109 flights on DEN to DTW, about 40% of it. Its 86.8% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Southwest at 57.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 80.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 57.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 649 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,247 | 86.8% | 79 min | 0.32% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 726 | 80.5% | 63 min | 0.14% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 486 | 79.6% | 83 min | 1.23% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 649 | 57.2% | 52 min | 0.92% | D+ |
The spread between United and Southwest is 23 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 23 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DEN to DTW
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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 1,247 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am365 flights85.1%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm363 flights82.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am153 flights91.5%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 91.5% on time. The full set of windows spans 9 points.
Across the year
Delta on DEN to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 75.0% on time, against 93.3% in November. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 116 flights.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 4 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DEN to DTW runs when it is late
Delta on DEN to DTW often beats the schedule: 473 of 1,242 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 164 late arrivals split 53 under half an hour, 44 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 67 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early473 flights38.1%
- Within 15 min605 flights48.7%
- 15–29 min late53 flights4.3%
- 30–59 min late44 flights3.5%
- 1–2 hours late46 flights3.7%
- 2+ hours late21 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,242 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
35 of 163 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 36 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on DEN to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 October 2025, 13 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 October 2025 | 13 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 June 2026 | 9 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 April 2026 | 8 hours 33 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 8 October 2025 | 7 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 January 2026 | 5 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 42%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 12,975 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,420 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.32%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.4% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,123 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.2% on time across 1,248 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,247 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 DEN to DTW
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 93.3% on time and December 75.0%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,242 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to DTW, every carrier
- Delta on DTW to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to DTW80.5%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to DTW79.6%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to DTW57.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.