Carrier route record
DLRDU→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Raleigh to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,333
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 90%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on RDU to DTW earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,333 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's RDU to DTW record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 113 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,312 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.58%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
88.6%
Every carrier on RDU to DTW, 1,480 flights
These figures cover 1,333 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on RDU to DTW
Delta flew 1,333 of the 1,480 flights on RDU to DTW, most of the route. Its 88.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 88.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 90.9% to Frontier at 87.6%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 33 | 90.9% | 80 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,333 | 88.6% | 85 min | 1.58% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 114 | 87.6% | 52 min | 0.88% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on RDU to DTW
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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.
- 5am–8am365 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am255 flights93.2%
- 11am–2pm349 flights87.8%
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm362 flights81.2%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.6% of the time, against 81.2% for the evening window. That is 12 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 RDU to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 75.5% on time, against 96.6% 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 118 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 83.7%, a spread of 8 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on RDU to DTW runs when it is late
Delta on RDU to DTW often beats the schedule: 557 of 1,312 completed flights, 42%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 149 late arrivals split 41 under half an hour, 47 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 61 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early557 flights42.5%
- Within 15 min606 flights46.2%
- 15–29 min late41 flights3.1%
- 30–59 min late47 flights3.6%
- 1–2 hours late29 flights2.2%
- 2+ hours late32 flights2.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,312 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
47 of 177 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. Only 19 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on RDU to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 July 2026, 17 hours 6 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across July, December, June and April, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 July 2026 | 17 hours 6 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 9 December 2025 | 5 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 June 2026 | 5 hours 42 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 3 April 2026 | 5 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 December 2025 | 5 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 to one. The split is drawn from 12,703 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.58% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The 501 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.6% on time across 1,333 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 1,333 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 RDU to DTW
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 96.6% on time and December 75.5%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,312 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to DTW, every carrier
- Delta on DTW to RDU, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on RDU to DTW87.6%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.