Carrier route record
DLDTW→SFO
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,385
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 77%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DTW to SFO draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,385 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Delta on DTW to SFO runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 122 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,375 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.72%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.4%
Every carrier on DTW to SFO, 1,792 flights
These figures cover 1,385 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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 SFO
Delta flew 1,385 of the 1,792 flights on DTW to SFO, most of the route. Its 65.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 66.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 70.9% to Delta at 65.1%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 407 | 70.9% | 81 min | 0.49% | C+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,385 | 65.1% | 61 min | 0.72% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW to SFO
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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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am2 flights—
- 8am–11am363 flights73.9%
- 11am–2pm303 flights68.0%
- 2pm–5pm288 flights68.8%
- 5pm–8pm121 flights60.0%
- 8pm–5am308 flights50.5%
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.5% on time, against 73.9% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to SFO through the year
June is the worst month at 40.8% on time, 53 points below September, the best at 93.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 138 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 58.7%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on DTW to SFO runs when it is late
The 480 late arrivals split 183 under half an hour, 154 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 143 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early223 flights16.2%
- Within 15 min672 flights48.9%
- 15–29 min late183 flights13.3%
- 30–59 min late154 flights11.2%
- 1–2 hours late96 flights7.0%
- 2+ hours late47 flights3.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,375 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
42 of 328 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 194 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 SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on DTW to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 October 2025, 18 hours 45 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 October 2025 | 18 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 January 2026 | 16 hours 27 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 13 March 2026 | 12 hours 17 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 March 2026 | 12 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 April 2026 | 6 hours 21 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 46% of the 29,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%National Airspace System
- 38%Carrier
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 29,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 29,407 reported delay minutes.
46% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 14,000 minutes out of 29,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.72%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
10.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 2,079 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.4% on time across 1,385 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,385 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 SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 93.9% on time and June 40.8%, a swing of 53 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,375 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to SFO, every carrier
- Delta on SFO to DTW, the return leg
- United Airlines on DTW to SFO70.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.