Carrier route record

OODTW→IND

SkyWest Airlines · Detroit to Indianapolis

Flights: 729
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 74%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on DTW to IND lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. 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 is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 729 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on DTW to IND from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

77.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 719 completed flights

Avg delay

87 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.23%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.4%

Every carrier on DTW to IND, 981 flights

These figures cover 729 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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

SkyWest against every carrier on DTW to IND

SkyWest flew 729 of the 981 flights on DTW to IND, most of the route. Its 77.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.6% to SkyWest at 77.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on DTW to IND
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	192	83.6%	64 min	1.56%	B
Delta Air Linesthin sample	60	78.3%	60 min	0.00%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	729	77.1%	87 min	1.23%	B

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

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 729 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am183 flights73.9%
11am–2pm310 flights77.9%
2pm–5pm142 flights81.7%
5pm–8pm28 flights—
8pm–5am66 flights72.6%

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 2pm–5pm slot at 81.7% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 72.6%. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 310 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on DTW to IND through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, December worst

December is the weak month at 47.3% on time, against 95.1% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 105 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.3%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 72% of the 14,000 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.

Carrier
72%
Extreme weather
20%
National Airspace System
8%

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 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,412 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, 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 10,000 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.23% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.0% 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 231 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 runs 78.8% on time across 729 flights, within 2 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. 729 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.

What to do with this

Booking SkyWest on DTW to IND

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 729 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. 719 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures