Route reliability record
DTW→GRR
Detroit to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 1,619
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 120 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 1,619 DTW to GRR flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly DTW to GRR: a 5pm–8pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 79.3% of the time and Saturday flights 80.8%, 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 1,604 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.86%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
73.4% on time across 1,459 flights
These figures cover 1,619 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.0% 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 GRR
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 144 | 96.5% | 58 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,459 | 73.4% | 102 min | 0.96% | C+ |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 16 | 31.2% | 60 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Detroit to Grand Rapids
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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DTW → AZODetroit to Kalamazoo | SkyWest Airlines | 73.4% | 75.2% | 2.46% | 8am–11am, Sat | OO 3986 10:05 |
| 2. DTW → LANDetroit to Lansing | SkyWest Airlines | 73.0% | 73.6% | 0.84% | 8am–11am, Sat | OO 3684 22:55 |
| 3. DTW → GRRDetroit to Grand Rapids | SkyWest Airlines | 72.7% | 73.4% | 0.96% | 2pm–5pm, Sat | — |
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 1,619 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am340 flights76.8%
- 11am–2pm207 flights72.0%
- 2pm–5pm417 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm297 flights79.3%
- 8pm–5am358 flights70.2%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 79.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 9 points.
Explore
Filter DTW to GRR 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 GRR, the best departure window is 5pm–8pm at 79.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 70.2%, a real gap of 9.1 points. All US flights leaving 5pm–8pm ran 68.0%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am76.8%
- 11am–2pm72.0%
- 2–5pm76.4%
- 5–8pm79.3%
- 8pm–5am70.2%
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 44 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 45.8% on time, against 89.8% 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. November was the busiest month here, with 192 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.6%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 70% of the 40,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 70%Carrier
- 20%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%Late-arriving aircraft
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 39,935 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 70%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 28,000 of the 40,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
13.0% 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 120 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.6% on time across 1,620 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,619 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 GRR 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. September runs 89.8% on time and December 45.8%, a swing of 44 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,604 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to GRR questions
How often is DTW to GRR 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 1,619 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 GRR 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 GRR?
The 5pm–8pm departure window is the strongest at 79.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 70.2%, 9 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 GRR?
December is the weakest month at 45.8% on time, compared with 89.8% in September. Across the year that is 44 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
- GRR to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on DTW to GRR96.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to GRR73.4%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.2%
- ORD to GRR, a related route69.5%
- DTW to ATL, a related route78.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record96.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record73.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record31.2%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. DTW to GRR and GRR to DTW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DTW to GRR’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.