DL1303

DL1303 arrived on time 62.8% of the time, against 81.9% for all DTW → MSP flights, so this departure is 19.1 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Delta Air Lines’ own flights on this route it is 18.9 points worse.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 625 operations, June 2024 – July 2026 · If DL1303 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.

This flight runs unusually far behind the carrier's own average on this route, worse than 98% of 11,589 comparable flight numbers.

62.8% on time for this specific departure, against 81.7% for the same carrier's other flights on this route.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026 · The one thing about this specific departure that ranks most extreme against every other published flight number, out of everything FlyerIntel checks — shown only when something clears a real statistical bar, not for every flight.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DL1303 on DTW → MSP. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026

The aircraft flying DL1303 came in 15 or more minutes late on 23% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.

Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into DTW just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 322 of 623 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026

DL1303 pushes back an average of 29.4 minutes late and reaches the gate at MSP an average of 25.2 minutes late. The 4.1 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. Its 18.7 minutes on the taxiways at DTW is about what any departure from the airport in that hour spends.

On arrival at MSP, DL1303 spends 7.5 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is about what any arrival at MSP spends on the ground before reaching the gate.

Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached MSP. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 15,218 departures from DTW scheduled in the clock hour DL1303 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at MSP (369,815 flights), not just DL1303’s own. More on taxi time.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026

DL1303 is scheduled out of DTW at 7:55 PM, in the 7 PM–8 PM bank. Departures from DTW in that hour arrive on time 70.7% of the time against 79.6% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 8.9 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.

The two airport figures cover every departure from DTW to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.

Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route DL1303 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026

Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. DL1303 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.

• DL2203 DTW→MSP Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 4:35 PM, on time 79.6%
• DL2697 DTW→MSP Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 12:15 PM, on time 85.1%
• DL2258 DTW→MSP Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 9:00 AM, on time 87.7%
• DL2185 SNA→MSP Delta Air Lines flight into MSP, SNA to MSP, departs 8:00 AM, on time 85.9%