Route reliability record
DTW→BUF
Detroit to Buffalo
- Flights
- 1,091
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 241 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,091 DTW to BUF flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 641 at 79.2% on time.
Best time to fly DTW to BUF: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.2% of the time and Thursday flights 83.9%, against 78.9% 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
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,071 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.74%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
79.2% on time across 641 flights
These figures cover 1,091 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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 BUF
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 7 | 100.0% | — | 14.29% | A− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 641 | 79.2% | 99 min | 1.56% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 443 | 78.1% | 116 min | 1.81% | B |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 79.2%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Detroit to Buffalo
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. DTW → BUFDetroit to Buffalo | SkyWest Airlines | 78.0% | 79.2% | 1.56% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. DTW → BUFDetroit to Buffalo | Delta Air Lines | 76.7% | 78.1% | 1.81% | 2pm–5pm, Thu | — |
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 1,091 flights.
- 5am–8am117 flights85.2%
- 8am–11am169 flights77.0%
- 11am–2pm70 flights81.2%
- 2pm–5pm254 flights79.4%
- 5pm–8pm118 flights78.6%
- 8pm–5am363 flights77.1%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.2% of the time, against 77.0% for the morning window. That is 8 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 36 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.
July is the worst month at 52.9% on time, 36 points below October, the best at 89.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 135 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.5%. 10 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 66% of the 24,000 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.
- 66%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
- 7%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 23,944 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, 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 16,000 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.74% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
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. 10.4% 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 241 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 runs 81.5% on time across 1,091 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,091 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 BUF after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,091 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 78.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,071 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to BUF questions
How often is DTW to BUF delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.1% of the 1,091 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to BUF?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 79.2% on time across 641 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 78.1%, a gap of about a point. 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 DTW to BUF?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.2% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 77.0%, 8 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 July delays on DTW to BUF?
July is the weakest month at 52.9% on time, compared with 89.1% in October. Across the year that is 36 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
- BUF to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to BUF79.2%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to BUF78.1%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.0%
- ORD to BUF, a related route70.6%
- DTW to ATL, a related route79.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record100.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record78.1%
- 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 BUF and BUF 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.