Carrier route record
DLDTW→TPA
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,716
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 72%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DTW to TPA lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 1,716 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on DTW to TPA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,690 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.34%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.0%
Every carrier on DTW to TPA, 2,370 flights
These figures cover 1,716 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 TPA
Delta flew 1,716 of the 2,370 flights on DTW to TPA, most of the route. Its 80.9% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.9% to Southwest at 40.0%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,716 | 80.9% | 61 min | 1.34% | B |
| Spirit Airlines | 521 | 74.7% | 63 min | 3.84% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 70.9% | 60 min | 0.78% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 40.0% | 23 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW to TPA
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 19 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–8am356 flights87.9%
- 8am–11am416 flights81.0%
- 11am–2pm194 flights82.0%
- 2pm–5pm337 flights80.3%
- 5pm–8pm154 flights84.3%
- 8pm–5am259 flights69.4%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.9% of the time, against 69.4% for the overnight window. That is 19 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 416 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to TPA through the year
January is the weak month at 64.1% on time, against 95.0% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 207 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 86.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.0%. 10 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 50% of the 20,000 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.
- 50%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 9,883 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 19,664 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.34% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.0% 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 983 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 runs 82.4% on time across 1,715 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,716 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 TPA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 95.0% on time and January 64.1%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,690 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to TPA, every carrier
- Delta on TPA to DTW, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to TPA74.7%
- Frontier Airlines on DTW to TPA70.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) 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.