Route reliability record
DTW→ALB
Detroit to Albany
- Flights
- 1,099
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 489 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,099 DTW to ALB flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly DTW to ALB: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.5% of the time and Saturday flights 84.7%, against 76.2% 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
76.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,082 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
76.3% on time across 796 flights
These figures cover 1,099 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 DTW to ALB
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 796 | 76.3% | 101 min | 1.76% | B |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 303 | 76.1% | 82 min | 0.33% | B+ |
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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am171 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am228 flights72.6%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm337 flights73.9%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am363 flights72.6%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.5% of the time, against 72.6% for the overnight window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 39 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.
January is the weak month at 53.1% on time, against 91.9% in May. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 112 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.8%. 17 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 70% of the 25,000 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.
- 70%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
- 8%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 24,592 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 70%, 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 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.36% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
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. 11.5% 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 489 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 83.2% on time across 1,099 flights, 7 points above 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,099 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 ALB 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. May runs 91.9% on time and January 53.1%, a swing of 39 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,082 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to ALB questions
How often is DTW to ALB delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.8% of the 1,099 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DTW to ALB compared with the rest of the country?
76.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DTW to ALB?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 72.6%, 21 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 January delays on DTW to ALB?
January is the weakest month at 53.1% on time, compared with 91.9% in May. Across the year that is 39 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
- ALB to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to ALB76.3%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to ALB76.1%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.0%
- ORD to ALB, a related route75.7%
- DTW to ATL, a related route79.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record76.1%
- 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. DTW to ALB and ALB to DTW 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.