Carrier route record
DLDTW→CLT
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,345
- 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 DTW to CLT lands a B, 5 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 1,345 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DTW to CLT record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,324 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.8%
Every carrier on DTW to CLT, 3,537 flights
These figures cover 1,345 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 CLT
Delta flew 1,345 of the 3,537 flights on DTW to CLT, about 38% of it. Its 82.3% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to Frontier at 58.6%. 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+ |
| American Airlines | 2,073 | 85.1% | 94 min | 1.83% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 88 | 83.9% | 95 min | 1.14% | B |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,345 | 82.3% | 72 min | 1.49% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 58.6% | 172 min | 3.33% | D− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW to CLT
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 18 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–8am290 flights87.3%
- 8am–11am344 flights87.2%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm323 flights83.2%
- 5pm–8pm141 flights80.3%
- 8pm–5am246 flights69.4%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.3% of the time, against 69.4% for the overnight window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 344 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to CLT through the year
January is the weak month at 70.7% on time, against 90.0% in August. 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.2%. 12 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 58% of the 17,000 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.
- 58%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, 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 9,903 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,958 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.49% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.0% 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.
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 88.1% on time across 1,344 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,345 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 CLT
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. August runs 90.0% on time and January 70.7%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,324 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to CLT, every carrier
- Delta on CLT to DTW, the return leg
- American Airlines on DTW to CLT85.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) 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.