Carrier route record
DLRSW→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Fort Myers to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,358
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 77%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on RSW to DTW lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,358 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on RSW 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
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,339 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.25%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.7%
Every carrier on RSW to DTW, 1,773 flights
These figures cover 1,358 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 RSW to DTW
Delta flew 1,358 of the 1,773 flights on RSW to DTW, most of the route. Its 78.0% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.0% to Frontier at 48.8%. 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) | 1,358 | 78.0% | 80 min | 1.25% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 335 | 67.1% | 67 min | 5.67% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 80 | 48.8% | 121 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am134 flights88.7%
- 8am–11am270 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm365 flights78.8%
- 2pm–5pm220 flights72.9%
- 5pm–8pm357 flights68.9%
- 8pm–5am12 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.7% of the time, against 68.9% for the evening 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on RSW to DTW through the year
July is the worst month at 60.3% on time, 33 points below October, the best at 93.5%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 179 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.5%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on RSW to DTW runs when it is late
The 294 late arrivals split 114 under half an hour, 84 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 96 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early298 flights22.3%
- Within 15 min747 flights55.8%
- 15–29 min late114 flights8.5%
- 30–59 min late84 flights6.3%
- 1–2 hours late55 flights4.1%
- 2+ hours late41 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,339 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
38 of 250 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 82 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DTW.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on RSW to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 17 hours 20 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December 2025 | 17 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 February 2026 | 16 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 December 2025 | 15 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 May 2026 | 15 hours 22 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 13 March 2026 | 14 hours 22 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 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 23,619 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,871 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.25% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,084 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 runs 75.4% on time across 1,357 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,358 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 RSW to DTW
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 93.5% on time and July 60.3%, a swing of 33 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,339 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RSW to DTW, every carrier
- Delta on DTW to RSW, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on RSW to DTW67.1%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) 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.