Carrier route record
DLRDU→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Raleigh to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,337
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 88%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 10 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 1,337 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's RDU to DTW record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 104 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,320 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
87.7%
Every carrier on RDU to DTW, 1,525 flights
These figures cover 1,337 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 RDU to DTW
Delta flew 1,337 of the 1,525 flights on RDU to DTW, most of the route. Its 88.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 88.0% to Spirit at 83.1%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,337 | 88.0% | 82 min | 1.20% | A |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 111 | 87.3% | 56 min | 0.90% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 77 | 83.1% | 77 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on RDU 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 14 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 flights93.1%
- 8am–11am259 flights94.5%
- 11am–2pm349 flights85.5%
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm362 flights80.4%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
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 94.5% of the time, against 80.4% for the evening window. That is 14 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. August was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 84.7%. 8 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 46% of the 13,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
46% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 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 13,041 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 94.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.4% 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 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. 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 84.2% on time across 1,337 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 1,337 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. 1,320 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 DTW87.3%
- 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 7.04 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.