Carrier route record
DLPHX→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Phoenix to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,331
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 55%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on PHX 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 an hour and a half. That rests on 1,331 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's PHX to DTW record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,318 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.7%
Every carrier on PHX to DTW, 2,426 flights
These figures cover 1,331 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 PHX to DTW
Delta flew 1,331 of the 2,426 flights on PHX to DTW, most of the route. Its 84.3% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.3% to Southwest at 56.7%. Three 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) | 1,331 | 84.3% | 82 min | 0.68% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 125 | 80.5% | 114 min | 1.60% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 312 | 76.5% | 85 min | 1.28% | B |
| American Airlines | 628 | 76.2% | 76 min | 0.64% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 56.7% | 38 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on PHX 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 20 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 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am66 flights98.5%
- 11am–2pm298 flights83.1%
- 2pm–5pm293 flights78.7%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am308 flights79.1%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 98.5% of the time, against 78.7% for the afternoon window. That is 20 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 PHX to DTW through the year
July is the worst month at 77.9% on time, 11 points below September, the best at 89.1%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 91.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.9%. 11 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 17,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
45% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 16,981 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 7,006 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, 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
5.7% 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.
At 1,671 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 74.7% on time across 1,333 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,331 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 PHX to DTW
Put together: take the 8am–11am departure, avoid July if the dates are flexible, and if two carriers are within a few dollars of each other, American is the one with the record behind it. None of that guarantees an on-time arrival; it moves the odds by 20 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 1,318 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to DTW, every carrier
- Delta on DTW to PHX, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on PHX to DTW80.5%
- Frontier Airlines on PHX to DTW76.5%
- American Airlines on PHX to DTW76.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.