Route reliability record
CLE→DTW
Cleveland to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,003
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 95 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About 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 1,003 CLE to DTW flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLE to DTW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.7% of the time and Saturday flights 88.5%, against 79.1% 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
79.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 997 completed flights
Avg delay
117 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.7% on time across 964 flights
These figures cover 1,003 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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 CLE 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 21 | 100.0% | — | 4.76% | A− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 964 | 78.7% | 114 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 18 | 77.8% | 249 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 1,003 flights.
- 5am–8am98 flights83.7%
- 8am–11am289 flights82.2%
- 11am–2pm15 flights—
- 2pm–5pm471 flights77.4%
- 5pm–8pm130 flights74.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.7% of the time, against 74.6% for the evening window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 471 flights scheduled in it.
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.
December is the weak month at 57.0% on time, against 94.6% 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. January was the busiest month here, with 109 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.9%. 18 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 69% of the 24,000 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.
- 69%Carrier
- 22%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
- 1%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 22% 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 3.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 24,272 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 69%, 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 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.50%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
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. 10.8% 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 95 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 73.7% on time across 1,004 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,003 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. 1,003 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 79.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 997 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to DTW questions
How often is CLE 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 20.9% of the 1,003 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is CLE to DTW compared with the rest of the country?
79.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLE to DTW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.6%, 9 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 CLE to DTW?
December is the weakest month at 57.0% on time, compared with 94.6% in September. 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 CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.6%
- ORD to DTW, a related route70.6%
- CLE to ATL, a related route85.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record100.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record77.8%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. CLE to DTW and DTW to CLE 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.