Carrier route record
DLDTW→FLL
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 1,815
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 67%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DTW to FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,815 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on DTW to FLL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,784 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.43%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.4%
Every carrier on DTW to FLL, 2,706 flights
These figures cover 1,815 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on DTW to FLL
Delta flew 1,815 of the 2,706 flights on DTW to FLL, most of the route. Its 74.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 74.2% to Frontier at 56.5%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,815 | 74.2% | 70 min | 1.43% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 802 | 70.0% | 72 min | 2.49% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 56.5% | 69 min | 4.49% | D− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW to FLL
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 30 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–8am365 flights86.1%
- 8am–11am337 flights80.2%
- 11am–2pm352 flights78.6%
- 2pm–5pm353 flights68.9%
- 5pm–8pm138 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am270 flights55.8%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.8% on time, against 86.1% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to FLL through the year
October is the best month on the calendar at 89.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 186 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.5%. 19 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 50% of the 32,000 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.
- 50%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 16,000 of the 32,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 32,055 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,127 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 79.3% on time across 1,817 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 1,815 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 FLL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 89.1% on time and March 59.7%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,784 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to FLL, every carrier
- Delta on FLL to DTW, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to FLL70.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- 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.