Route reliability record
CMH→DTW
Columbus to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,508
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 155 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,508 CMH to DTW flights, of which Republic Airways flew 916 at 89.7% on time.
Best time to fly CMH to DTW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.7% of the time and Saturday flights 89.5%, against 85.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 83 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,496 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.80%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
89.7% on time across 916 flights
These figures cover 1,508 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CMH to DTW
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 89.7% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 79.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 587 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 916 | 89.7% | 69 min | 0.33% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 587 | 79.4% | 105 min | 1.53% | B |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 5 | 60.0% | 52 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Republic leads SkyWest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on CMH 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 Columbus 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. CMH → DTWColumbus to Detroit | Republic Airways | 89.4% | 89.7% | 0.33% | 5am–8am, Fri | YX 5812 08:10 |
| 2. CMH → DTWColumbus to Detroit | SkyWest Airlines | 78.2% | 79.4% | 1.53% | 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 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am244 flights84.9%
- 8am–11am584 flights91.7%
- 11am–2pm163 flights89.0%
- 2pm–5pm227 flights77.9%
- 5pm–8pm290 flights78.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.7% of the time, against 77.9% for the afternoon 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 584 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CMH 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 CMH to DTW, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 91.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 77.9%, a wide gap of 13.8 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am84.9%
- 8–11am91.7%
- 11am–2pm89.0%
- 2–5pm77.9%
- 5–8pm78.2%
- 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 30 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 64.4% on time, against 94.4% in April. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 180 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.3%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 66% of the 19,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
- 13%National Airspace System
- 6%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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 19,129 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.80%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.6% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 155 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 82.1% on time across 1,505 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,508 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. April runs 94.4% on time and December 64.4%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,496 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CMH to DTW questions
How often is CMH to DTW delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.4% of the 1,508 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CMH to DTW?
Republic Airways leads at 89.7% on time across 916 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 79.4%, a gap of 10 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 CMH to DTW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 77.9%, 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 CMH to DTW?
December is the weakest month at 64.4% on time, compared with 94.4% in April. Across the year that is 30 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 CMH — the return legseparate record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on CMH to DTW89.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on CMH to DTW79.4%
- CMH to ORD, a related route75.4%
- ORD to DTW, a related route71.1%
- CMH to ATL, a related route84.8%
- Republic Airways on-time record89.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record60.0%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. CMH to DTW and DTW to CMH 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.