Carrier route record

DLDTW→PIT

Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Pittsburgh

Flights: 125
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
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 PIT 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 125 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DTW to PIT record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 122 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.60%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.2%

Every carrier on DTW to PIT, 1,006 flights

These figures cover 125 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 PIT

Delta flew 125 of the 1,006 flights on DTW to PIT, about 12% of it. Its 82.0% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 85.3% to SkyWest at 72.7%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DTW to PIT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	342	85.3%	58 min	0.29%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample	125	82.0%	64 min	1.60%	B
SkyWest Airlines	539	72.7%	85 min	0.74%	C+

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 125 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's DTW to PIT record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 82.0% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Delta on DTW to PIT through the year

Jul–Sep 20251 flights—
Jan–Mar 202689 flights76.7%
Apr–Jun 202635 flights94.3%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 82.0% on time across 125 flights.

Split by quarter, Delta on DTW to PIT logged 1 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 89 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 35 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 82.0% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 63% of the 1,401 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.

Carrier
63%
National Airspace System
23%
Late-arriving aircraft
12%
Extreme weather
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 63%, 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 881 of the 1,401 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,401 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.60% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.80%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.6% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 201 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 83.7% on time across 125 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 125 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on DTW to PIT

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 125 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 82.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 122 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures