Route reliability record
ALB→DTW
Albany to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,099
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 489 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 6 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,099 ALB to DTW flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly ALB to DTW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.3% of the time and Thursday flights 89.6%, against 83.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,080 completed flights
Avg delay
122 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
79.8% on time across 796 flights
These figures cover 1,099 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ALB to DTW
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 Linesthin sample | 303 | 92.1% | 147 min | 0.33% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 796 | 79.8% | 119 min | 2.14% | B |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 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–8am365 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am171 flights92.3%
- 11am–2pm228 flights71.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm335 flights78.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 71.7% on time against 92.3% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 62.5% on time, against 96.1% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 112 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 89.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.4%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 77% 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.
- 77%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 1%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 22,162 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 77%, 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 17,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.1% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 489 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.2% on time across 1,099 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,099 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DTW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 96.1% on time and December 62.5%, a swing of 34 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,080 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ALB to DTW questions
How often is ALB to DTW delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.8% of the 1,099 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is ALB to DTW compared with the rest of the country?
83.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ALB to DTW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 92.3% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 71.7%, 21 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on ALB to DTW?
December is the weakest month at 62.5% on time, compared with 96.1% in September. Across the year that is 34 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to ALB — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on ALB to DTW92.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on ALB to DTW79.8%
- ALB to ORD, a related route76.6%
- ORD to DTW, a related route70.6%
- ALB to BWI, a related route88.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record92.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.8%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. ALB to DTW and DTW to ALB are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.