Carrier route record
DLTVC→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Traverse City to Detroit
- Flights
- 378
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 35%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on TVC to DTW lands a B, 4 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 378 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's TVC to DTW record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 370 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.4%
Every carrier on TVC to DTW, 1,079 flights
These figures cover 378 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 TVC to DTW
Delta flew 378 of the 1,079 flights on TVC to DTW, about 35% of it. Its 81.9% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.9% to SkyWest at 73.4%.
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) | 378 | 81.9% | 76 min | 2.12% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 701 | 73.4% | 97 min | 2.43% | C |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on TVC to DTW
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 378 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's TVC to DTW record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 81.9% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Delta on TVC to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 48.4% on time, against 100.0% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 36 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 87.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 78.5%. 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. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 5,062 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.
- 54%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
- 4%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,753 of the 5,062 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,062 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.5% 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.
At 207 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 75.2% on time across 378 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 378 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 TVC to DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 378 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 81.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 370 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.