Carrier route record
DLDTW→RDU
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Raleigh
- Flights
- 1,333
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 90%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,333 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DTW to RDU record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 73 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,312 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.58%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
84.3%
Every carrier on DTW to RDU, 1,480 flights
These figures cover 1,333 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 RDU
Delta flew 1,333 of the 1,480 flights on DTW to RDU, most of the route. Its 84.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 84.8% to Frontier at 80.0%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 33 | 84.8% | 52 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,333 | 84.6% | 60 min | 1.58% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 114 | 80.0% | 61 min | 3.51% | B− |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW to RDU
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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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am255 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am349 flights89.2%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm349 flights82.8%
- 5pm–8pm16 flights—
- 8pm–5am363 flights75.7%
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 93.6% of the time, against 75.7% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.4%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DTW to RDU runs when it is late
Delta on DTW to RDU often beats the schedule: 449 of 1,312 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 202 late arrivals split 79 under half an hour, 56 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 67 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early449 flights34.2%
- Within 15 min661 flights50.4%
- 15–29 min late79 flights6.0%
- 30–59 min late56 flights4.3%
- 1–2 hours late47 flights3.6%
- 2+ hours late20 flights1.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,312 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
41 of 186 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. 57 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on DTW to RDU
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 April 2026, 11 hours 9 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 April 2026 | 11 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 July 2026 | 9 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 November 2025 | 4 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 May 2026 | 3 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 June 2026 | 3 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 60% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,294 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 12,203 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.58% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.1% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 88.6% on time across 1,333 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 1,333 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. 1,312 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 RDU80.0%
- 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 7.05 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.