Route reliability record
BUF→DTW
Buffalo to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,091
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 241 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five 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 1,091 BUF to DTW flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 443 at 84.1% on time.
Best time to fly BUF to DTW: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.7% of the time and Saturday flights 88.0%, against 81.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
81.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,072 completed flights
Avg delay
113 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.74%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
84.1% on time across 443 flights
These figures cover 1,091 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 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 | 84.1% | 108 min | 1.81% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 7 | 83.3% | 28 min | 14.29% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 641 | 79.7% | 116 min | 1.56% | B |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 84.1%, 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.
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 | 82.6% | 84.1% | 1.81% | 5am–8am, Sat | DL 2898 06:20 |
| 2. BUF → DTWBuffalo to Detroit | SkyWest Airlines | 78.5% | 79.7% | 1.56% | 2pm–5pm, Wed | — |
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 12 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights84.8%
- 8am–11am165 flights82.2%
- 11am–2pm188 flights82.5%
- 2pm–5pm98 flights86.7%
- 5pm–8pm254 flights74.8%
- 8pm–5am21 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 86.7% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 74.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. 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 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. June was the busiest month here, with 135 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.5%. 14 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 58% 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.
- 58%Carrier
- 23%Extreme weather
- 12%National Airspace System
- 7%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 3.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 22,284 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, 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 13,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.74% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 78.9% on time across 1,091 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,091 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. 1,091 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 81.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,072 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 18.5% of the 1,091 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 84.1% on time across 443 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 79.7%, 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 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 86.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.8%, 12 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 DTW84.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on BUF to DTW79.7%
- BUF to ORD, a related route74.0%
- ORD to DTW, a related route70.6%
- BUF to LGA, a related route78.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record83.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.7%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.