Carrier route record
DLDTW→RDU
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Raleigh
- Flights
- 1,337
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 88%
- 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 RDU earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,337 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DTW to RDU record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 66 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,320 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.8%
Every carrier on DTW to RDU, 1,525 flights
These figures cover 1,337 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 RDU
Delta flew 1,337 of the 1,525 flights on DTW to RDU, most of the route. Its 84.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.2% to Frontier at 80.4%. Two 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) | 1,337 | 84.2% | 63 min | 1.20% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 77 | 83.1% | 76 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 111 | 80.4% | 63 min | 3.60% | B− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW to RDU
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–8am259 flights92.2%
- 8am–11am349 flights88.2%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm340 flights84.7%
- 5pm–8pm25 flights—
- 8pm–5am363 flights74.1%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.2% of the time, against 74.1% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to RDU through the year
December is the weak month at 72.6% on time, against 92.9% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.5%. 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 63% of the 13,000 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.
- 63%Carrier
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 8,206 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 13,080 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.6% 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.
The 501 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 88.0% on time across 1,337 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,337 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 RDU
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 92.9% on time and December 72.6%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,320 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to RDU, every carrier
- Delta on RDU to DTW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DTW to RDU80.4%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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.