Route reliability record
DTW→BDL
Detroit to Hartford
- Flights
- 1,242
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 549 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 a little over an hour. That rests on 1,242 DTW to BDL flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly DTW to BDL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.0%, against 85.4% 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 81 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,214 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
85.5% on time across 1,240 flights
These figures cover 1,242 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 DTW to BDL
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 Lines | 1,240 | 85.5% | 68 min | 2.18% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 600 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DTW to BDL
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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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 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am164 flights96.2%
- 8am–11am365 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm348 flights86.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am365 flights77.3%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.2% of the time, against 77.3% for the overnight window. That is 19 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DTW to BDL 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 BDL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 96.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 77.3%, a wide gap of 18.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am96.2%
- 8–11am88.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm86.4%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am77.3%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 69.9% on time, against 92.0% in October. 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 118 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.2%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 45% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 12,525 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,663 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.17% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 549 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 88.7% on time across 1,243 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,242 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 BDL 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. October runs 92.0% on time and December 69.9%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,214 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to BDL questions
How often is DTW to BDL 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 14.6% of the 1,242 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DTW to BDL compared with the rest of the country?
85.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DTW to BDL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 77.3%, 19 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 BDL?
December is the weakest month at 69.9% on time, compared with 92.0% in October. Across the year that is 22 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
- BDL to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.2%
- ORD to BDL, a related route74.5%
- DTW to ATL, a related route78.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.5%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record50.0%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. DTW to BDL and BDL 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.