Carrier route record

DLSYR→DTW

Delta Air Lines · Syracuse to Detroit

Flights: 365
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 50%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on SYR to DTW earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SYR to DTW record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 84 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights

Avg delay

51 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.19%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

81.4%

Every carrier on SYR to DTW, 725 flights

These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 SYR to DTW

Delta flew 365 of the 725 flights on SYR to DTW, most of the route. Its 85.7% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 100.0% to SkyWest at 76.8%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on SYR to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	5	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	365	85.7%	51 min	2.19%	A
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	355	76.8%	88 min	0.28%	B+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on SYR to DTW

DL 209105:5086.5% · 349 flights

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Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 365 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's SYR to DTW record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 85.7% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Delta on SYR to DTW through the year

Jul–Sep 202530 flights100.0%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights74.4%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights77.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.0%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights98.4%

Scale runs 65% to 100%.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 85.7% on time across 365 flights.

Delta on SYR to DTW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 100.0% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 74.4%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 73 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 78.8%, a spread of 12 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Delta on SYR to DTW runs when it is late

Delta on SYR to DTW often beats the schedule: 145 of 357 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 51 late arrivals split 22 under half an hour, 14 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 15 an hour or more.

15+ min early145 flights40.6%
Within 15 min161 flights45.1%
15–29 min late22 flights6.2%
30–59 min late14 flights3.9%
1–2 hours late11 flights3.1%
2+ hours late4 flights1.1%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 357 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

3 of 25 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. In the other direction, 29 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 SYR to DTW

The latest arrival of the period was on 29 December 2025, 4 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in December 2025.

The latest arrivals of Delta on SYR to DTW in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
29 December 2025	4 hours 2 minutes	Carrier
14 December 2025	3 hours 47 minutes	Carrier
5 December 2025	2 hours 22 minutes	National Airspace System
12 June 2026	2 hours 15 minutes	Carrier
29 November 2025	1 hour 39 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

National Airspace System accounts for 50% of the 2,578 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

National Airspace System
50%
Carrier
45%
Extreme weather
5%

The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,158 of the 2,578 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,578 reported delay minutes.

50% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,283 minutes out of 2,578, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 2.19% 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 4.2% 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.

At 374 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.2% on time across 365 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on SYR to DTW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 365 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 85.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 357 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures