Route reliability record
ATW→DTW
Appleton to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,042
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 296 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That rests on 1,042 ATW to DTW flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATW to DTW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.4% of the time and Saturday flights 87.7%, against 78.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,027 completed flights
Avg delay
103 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.44%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.0% on time across 974 flights
These figures cover 1,042 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ATW 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 | 68 | 86.8% | 78 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 974 | 78.0% | 104 min | 1.54% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on ATW to DTW
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Appleton to Detroit
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. GRB → DTWGreen Bay to Detroit | SkyWest Airlines | 81.1% | 82.7% | 1.90% | 5am–8am, Fri | OO 4059 11:07 |
| 2. ATW → DTWAppleton to Detroit | SkyWest Airlines | 76.8% | 78.0% | 1.54% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | OO 4176 07:00 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 1,042 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights84.4%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm336 flights74.5%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm341 flights76.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. 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 74.5% on time against 84.4% for 5am–8am. 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.
Explore
Filter ATW to DTW by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ATW to DTW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.4% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 74.5%, a real gap of 9.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.4%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm74.5%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm76.3%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 38 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.
January is the weak month at 54.5% on time, against 92.5% in May. 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.2%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 68% of the 23,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 68%Carrier
- 24%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 0%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 24% 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 4.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 22,708 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 68%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 15,000 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.44% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 296 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 75.1% on time across 1,042 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,042 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DTW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,042 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 78.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,027 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATW to DTW questions
How often is ATW to DTW delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.4% of the 1,042 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is ATW to DTW compared with the rest of the country?
78.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ATW to DTW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.4% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 74.5%, 10 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 January delays on ATW to DTW?
January is the weakest month at 54.5% on time, compared with 92.5% in May. Across the year that is 38 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 ATW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- ATW to ORD, a related route70.9%
- ORD to DTW, a related route71.1%
- ATW to MSP, a related route74.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.0%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. ATW to DTW and DTW to ATW 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.