Carrier route record
DLDTW→BWI
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Baltimore
- 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 DTW to BWI lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,204 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DTW to BWI record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,185 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.9%
Every carrier on DTW to BWI, 2,261 flights
These figures cover 1,204 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 DTW to BWI
Delta flew 1,204 of the 2,261 flights on DTW to BWI, most of the route. Its 81.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 100.0% to Frontier at 76.9%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 14 | 100.0% | — | 7.14% | A− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 109 | 82.6% | 103 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,204 | 81.9% | 73 min | 1.50% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 784 | 79.6% | 48 min | 1.02% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 150 | 76.9% | 66 min | 2.00% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW to BWI
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 16 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–8am148 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am332 flights83.6%
- 11am–2pm9 flights—
- 2pm–5pm351 flights79.8%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am363 flights78.2%
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 93.8% of the time, against 78.2% for the overnight window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to BWI through the year
December is the weak month at 63.2% on time, against 92.2% 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 86.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.6%. 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 53% 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.
- 53%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, 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 8,339 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 15,658 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.50% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.3% 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 a little over an hour, 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 86.8% on time across 1,204 flights, 5 points above 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 DTW to BWI
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 92.2% on time and December 63.2%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,185 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to BWI, every carrier
- Delta on BWI to DTW, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to BWI82.6%
- Southwest Airlines on DTW to BWI79.6%
- Frontier Airlines on DTW to BWI76.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.