Carrier route record
DLDTW→DEN
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Denver
- Flights
- 1,248
- 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 DTW to DEN lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,248 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 726 at 82.8% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.8% on time across 726 flights.
Key figures
On time
79.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,243 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.16%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.5%
Every carrier on DTW to DEN, 3,110 flights
These figures cover 1,248 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 DTW to DEN
Delta flew 1,248 of the 3,110 flights on DTW to DEN, about 40% of it. Its 79.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Southwest at 73.9%. 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 82.8% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 73.9%. 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+ |
| United Airlines | 726 | 82.8% | 63 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 486 | 82.5% | 80 min | 1.03% | B |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,248 | 79.2% | 57 min | 0.16% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 649 | 73.9% | 60 min | 0.62% | C+ |
United leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW to DEN
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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 15 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am366 flights85.8%
- 11am–2pm363 flights83.7%
- 2pm–5pm365 flights70.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am154 flights74.0%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.8% of the time, against 70.4% for the afternoon window. That is 15 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 366 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to DEN through the year
December is the weak month at 62.7% on time, against 92.2% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 116 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.1%, a spread of 8 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DTW to DEN runs when it is late
The 258 late arrivals split 85 under half an hour, 93 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 80 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early293 flights23.6%
- Within 15 min692 flights55.7%
- 15–29 min late85 flights6.8%
- 30–59 min late93 flights7.5%
- 1–2 hours late59 flights4.7%
- 2+ hours late21 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,243 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
35 of 203 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. In the other direction, 90 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DEN.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on DTW to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 November 2025, 5 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across November, February, January and July, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 November 2025 | 5 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 February 2026 | 4 hours 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 January 2026 | 4 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 January 2026 | 4 hours 29 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 10 July 2026 | 4 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 35%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,001 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 14,814 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 5,238 minutes out of 15,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.16%, 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
6.4% 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 about 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 86.8% on time across 1,247 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,248 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 DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 92.2% on time and December 62.7%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,243 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to DEN, every carrier
- Delta on DEN to DTW, the return leg
- United Airlines on DTW to DEN82.8%
- Frontier Airlines on DTW to DEN82.5%
- Southwest Airlines on DTW to DEN73.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.