Route reliability record
BUF→DTW
Buffalo to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,294
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 241 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly 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 1,294 BUF to DTW flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 443 at 84.0% on time.
Best time to fly BUF to DTW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.2% of the time and Saturday flights 85.9%, against 81.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,269 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.93%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
84.0% on time across 443 flights
These figures cover 1,294 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% 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 BUF to DTW
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 443 | 84.0% | 91 min | 2.71% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 7 | 83.3% | 28 min | 14.29% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 844 | 80.5% | 106 min | 1.42% | B |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 84.0%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on BUF 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 Buffalo to Detroit
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BUF → DTWBuffalo to Detroit | Delta Air Lines | 81.7% | 84.0% | 2.71% | 5am–8am, Sat | DL 2898 06:15 |
| 2. BUF → DTWBuffalo to Detroit | SkyWest Airlines | 79.4% | 80.5% | 1.42% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights84.6%
- 8am–11am218 flights85.2%
- 11am–2pm250 flights82.0%
- 2pm–5pm160 flights83.6%
- 5pm–8pm252 flights75.0%
- 8pm–5am49 flights71.4%
Scale runs 65% to 90%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.2% of the time, against 71.4% for the overnight window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BUF 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 BUF to DTW, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 85.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 71.4%, a wide gap of 13.8 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am84.6%
- 8–11am85.2%
- 11am–2pm82.0%
- 2–5pm83.6%
- 5–8pm75.0%
- 8pm–5am71.4%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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 59.6% on time, against 96.3% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.3%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 61% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 61%Carrier
- 23%Extreme weather
- 12%National Airspace System
- 5%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 23,537 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 61%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 14,000 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.93% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 241 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 runs 79.2% on time across 1,294 flights, within 3 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 1,294 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 96.3% on time and December 59.6%, a swing of 37 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,269 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BUF to DTW questions
How often is BUF to DTW delayed?
Roughly 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 18.3% of the 1,294 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BUF to DTW?
Delta Air Lines leads at 84.0% on time across 443 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 80.5%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BUF to DTW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 71.4%, 14 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 BUF to DTW?
December is the weakest month at 59.6% on time, compared with 96.3% in September. Across the year that is 37 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 BUF — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on BUF to DTW84.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on BUF to DTW80.5%
- BUF to ORD, a related route74.4%
- ORD to DTW, a related route71.1%
- BUF to MCO, a related route75.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record83.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.5%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. BUF to DTW and DTW to BUF 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.