Route reliability record
DTW→ATW
Detroit to Appleton
- Flights
- 1,042
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 296 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,042 DTW to ATW flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly DTW to ATW: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.2% of the time and Saturday flights 81.6%, against 75.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
75.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,020 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.44%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
74.5% on time across 974 flights
These figures cover 1,042 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to ATW
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 68 | 83.6% | 47 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 974 | 74.5% | 98 min | 1.54% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on DTW to ATW
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 Detroit to Appleton
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DTW → GRBDetroit to Green Bay | SkyWest Airlines | 74.0% | 75.5% | 2.04% | 5pm–8pm, Thu | OO 4059 10:00 |
| 2. DTW → ATWDetroit to Appleton | SkyWest Airlines | 73.4% | 74.5% | 1.54% | 2pm–5pm, Sat (route) | OO 4159 21:09 |
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 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 1,042 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am336 flights79.2%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm97 flights80.2%
- 5pm–8pm250 flights70.4%
- 8pm–5am359 flights73.1%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 80.2% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 70.4%. 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 359 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DTW to ATW 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 DTW to ATW, the best departure window is 2pm–5pm at 80.2% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 70.4%, a real gap of 9.8 points. All US flights leaving 2pm–5pm ran 71.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am79.2%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm80.2%
- 5–8pm70.4%
- 8pm–5am73.1%
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 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.
December is the weak month at 53.3% on time, against 92.1% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.3%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 72% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 72%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 24,349 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 18,000 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.44% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.67%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
13.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 296 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.6% on time across 1,042 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,042 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 ATW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,042 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 75.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,020 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to ATW questions
How often is DTW to ATW 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 24.9% of the 1,042 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DTW to ATW compared with the rest of the country?
75.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DTW to ATW?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 80.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.4%, 10 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 DTW to ATW?
December is the weakest month at 53.3% on time, compared with 92.1% in September. 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
- ATW to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.2%
- ORD to ATW, a related route70.1%
- DTW to ATL, a related route78.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record74.5%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DTW to ATW and ATW 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.