Carrier route record
DLDTW→RSW
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Fort Myers
- Flights
- 1,357
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 76%
- 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 RSW sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,357 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on DTW to RSW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,335 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.18%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.5%
Every carrier on DTW to RSW, 1,774 flights
These figures cover 1,357 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on DTW to RSW
Delta flew 1,357 of the 1,774 flights on DTW to RSW, most of the route. Its 75.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 75.4% to Frontier at 71.2%. 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) | 1,357 | 75.4% | 69 min | 1.18% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 337 | 71.7% | 58 min | 5.64% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 80 | 71.2% | 74 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW to RSW
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am110 flights81.1%
- 8am–11am487 flights78.1%
- 11am–2pm32 flights71.9%
- 2pm–5pm368 flights75.2%
- 5pm–8pm223 flights73.0%
- 8pm–5am137 flights66.2%
Scale runs 60% to 85%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 81.1% of the time, against 66.2% for the overnight 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 487 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to RSW through the year
December is the weak month at 60.0% on time, against 92.5% in October. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 179 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 80.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.5%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DTW to RSW runs when it is late
The 329 late arrivals split 123 under half an hour, 96 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 110 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early255 flights19.1%
- Within 15 min751 flights56.3%
- 15–29 min late123 flights9.2%
- 30–59 min late96 flights7.2%
- 1–2 hours late57 flights4.3%
- 2+ hours late53 flights4.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,335 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
42 of 271 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 100 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 RSW.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on DTW to RSW
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 January 2026, 14 hours 54 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 January 2026 | 14 hours 54 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 10 March 2026 | 14 hours 53 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 6 hours 43 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 24 January 2026 | 6 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 December 2025 | 6 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 54% of the 23,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 22,842 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.18% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.44%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.2% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,084 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 runs 78.0% on time across 1,358 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,357 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 RSW
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 92.5% on time and December 60.0%, a swing of 33 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,335 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to RSW, every carrier
- Delta on RSW to DTW, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to RSW71.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) 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.