Route reliability record
CMH→DTW
Columbus to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,407
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,407 CMH to DTW flights, of which Republic Airways flew 879 at 89.8% on time.
Best time to fly CMH to DTW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.4% of the time and Thursday flights 89.8%, against 85.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 76 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,395 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.85%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
89.8% on time across 879 flights
These figures cover 1,407 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
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 89.8% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 77.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 523 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 879 | 89.8% | 70 min | 0.34% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 523 | 77.4% | 109 min | 1.72% | B |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 5 | 60.0% | 52 min | 0.00% | D+ |
The spread between Republic and SkyWest is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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.
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 | 89.5% | 89.8% | 0.34% | 5am–8am, Fri | YX 5812 08:10 |
| 2. CMH → DTWColumbus to Detroit | SkyWest Airlines | 76.1% | 77.4% | 1.72% | 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 17 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am237 flights84.4%
- 8am–11am543 flights92.4%
- 11am–2pm156 flights88.5%
- 2pm–5pm220 flights75.2%
- 5pm–8pm251 flights76.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.4% of the time, against 75.2% for the afternoon window. That is 17 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 543 flights scheduled in it.
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. June was the busiest month here, with 173 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 89.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.1%. 12 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 67% of the 19,000 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.
- 67%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 13%National Airspace System
- 6%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 18,946 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 67%, 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 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.85%, 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
6.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 runs 82.3% on time across 1,404 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 1,407 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. 1,395 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 14.8% of the 1,407 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 89.8% on time across 879 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 77.4%, a gap of 12 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 92.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 75.2%, 17 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 DTW89.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on CMH to DTW77.4%
- CMH to ORD, a related route74.5%
- ORD to DTW, a related route70.6%
- CMH to ATL, a related route85.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record89.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.4%
- 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 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.