Route reliability record
DTW→ELM
Detroit to Elmira
- Flights
- 936
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 331 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 936 DTW to ELM flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly DTW to ELM: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.7% of the time and Thursday flights 80.6%, against 77.1% 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
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 923 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.39%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
77.1% on time across 936 flights
These figures cover 936 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to ELM
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 | 936 | 77.1% | 95 min | 1.39% | B |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 936 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am163 flights80.4%
- 11am–2pm94 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm330 flights72.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am349 flights79.3%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 81.7% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 72.0%. 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 349 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DTW to ELM 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 ELM, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 81.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 72.0%, a real gap of 9.7 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am80.4%
- 11am–2pm81.7%
- 2–5pm72.0%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am79.3%
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 52.0% on time, against 90.9% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.1%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 73% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 73%Carrier
- 20%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 19,950 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 73%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 15,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.2% 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 331 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.5% on time across 936 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 936 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 ELM after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 936 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 77.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 923 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to ELM questions
How often is DTW to ELM delayed?
Roughly 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 22.9% of the 936 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 ELM compared with the rest of the country?
77.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half 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 ELM?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 81.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 72.0%, 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 ELM?
December is the weakest month at 52.0% on time, compared with 90.9% 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
- ELM to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.2%
- DTW to ATL, a related route78.9%
- DTW to LGA, a related route74.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.1%
- 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 ELM and ELM to DTW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DTW to ELM’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.