Carrier route record
DLTPA→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Tampa to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,715
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 72%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on TPA to DTW lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,715 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's TPA to DTW record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,690 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.1%
Every carrier on TPA to DTW, 2,371 flights
These figures cover 1,715 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 TPA to DTW
Delta flew 1,715 of the 2,371 flights on TPA to DTW, most of the route. Its 82.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.4% to Southwest at 40.0%. 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) | 1,715 | 82.4% | 75 min | 1.28% | B |
| Spirit Airlines | 522 | 78.8% | 60 min | 4.02% | B− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 129 | 75.0% | 74 min | 0.78% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 40.0% | 34 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on TPA 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 22 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–8am286 flights94.0%
- 8am–11am353 flights89.9%
- 11am–2pm244 flights78.3%
- 2pm–5pm471 flights79.4%
- 5pm–8pm309 flights71.6%
- 8pm–5am52 flights76.5%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.0% of the time, against 71.6% for the evening window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 471 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on TPA to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 65.8% on time, against 93.1% in September. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 207 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 77.5%. 9 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 22,000 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
- 32%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 4%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 22,000 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 22,250 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 94.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.28% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.2% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 983 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 runs 80.9% on time across 1,716 flights, within 2 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 1,715 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 TPA to DTW
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 93.1% on time and December 65.8%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,690 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to DTW, every carrier
- Delta on DTW to TPA, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on TPA to DTW78.8%
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to DTW75.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) 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.