Carrier route record
DLLAX→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,979
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 78%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LAX to DTW lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 1,979 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LAX to DTW record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 60 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,957 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.7%
Every carrier on LAX to DTW, 2,528 flights
These figures cover 1,979 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 LAX to DTW
Delta flew 1,979 of the 2,528 flights on LAX to DTW, most of the route. Its 83.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Spirit at 79.3%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,979 | 83.6% | 62 min | 0.76% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 547 | 79.3% | 85 min | 2.01% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LAX 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 12 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–8am478 flights89.0%
- 8am–11am331 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm385 flights77.5%
- 2pm–5pm345 flights79.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am440 flights81.8%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 77.5% on time against 89.3% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 478 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LAX to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 76.5% on time, against 91.0% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 200 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.6%. 6 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 57% 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.
- 57%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, 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 11,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 19,745 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.76%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 1,979 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 77.3% on time across 1,979 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,979 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 LAX to DTW
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 91.0% on time and December 76.5%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,957 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to DTW, every carrier
- Delta on DTW to LAX, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on LAX to DTW79.3%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) 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.