Carrier route record
DLLGA→DTW
Delta Air Lines · New York to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,980
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LGA to DTW carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,980 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 998 at 75.1% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on LGA to DTW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,908 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.0%
Every carrier on LGA to DTW, 4,011 flights
These figures cover 1,980 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 LGA to DTW
Delta flew 1,980 of the 4,011 flights on LGA to DTW, about 49% of it. Its 81.1% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.1% to Republic at 74.9%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,980 | 81.1% | 85 min | 3.54% | B− |
| Spirit Airlines | 998 | 75.1% | 89 min | 7.41% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 1,033 | 74.9% | 71 min | 5.23% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 7.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LGA 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 29 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–8am365 flights96.5%
- 8am–11am364 flights90.4%
- 11am–2pm365 flights79.7%
- 2pm–5pm233 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm355 flights71.6%
- 8pm–5am298 flights67.4%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.5% of the time, against 67.4% for the overnight window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LGA to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 65.5% on time, against 93.5% in February. 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 181 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.9%. 11 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 31,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% 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 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 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 30,684 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 31,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.54%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.9% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 502 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.3% on time across 1,979 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,980 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 LGA to DTW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.54% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,908 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to DTW, every carrier
- Delta on DTW to LGA, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to DTW75.1%
- Republic Airways on LGA to DTW74.9%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.