Carrier route record

DLLAS→DTW

Delta Air Lines · Las Vegas to Detroit

Flights: 1,894
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 67%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on LAS to DTW 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 a little over an hour. That rests on 1,894 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LAS to DTW record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 68 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,880 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.53%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.7%

Every carrier on LAS to DTW, 2,838 flights

These figures cover 1,894 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 LAS to DTW

Delta flew 1,894 of the 2,838 flights on LAS to DTW, most of the route. Its 84.4% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.4% to Southwest at 68.0%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LAS to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,894	84.4%	74 min	0.53%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	44	84.1%	47 min	0.00%	B+
Spirit Airlines	563	80.7%	88 min	1.24%	B
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	337	68.0%	44 min	0.00%	C+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on LAS to DTW

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 16 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–8am359 flights94.4%
8am–11am362 flights89.1%
11am–2pm452 flights81.9%
2pm–5pm356 flights79.1%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am365 flights78.2%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.4% of the time, against 78.2% for the overnight window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 452 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on LAS to DTW through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, December worst

December is the weak month at 75.5% on time, against 91.7% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 184 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.3%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 22,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
40%
Late-arriving aircraft
37%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
6%

37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 21,813 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 8,721 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.53%, below the national 1.81% 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

5.5% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,749 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 75.9% on time across 1,897 flights, 9 points below 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 9 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,894 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 LAS to DTW

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 91.7% on time and December 75.5%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,880 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures