Route reliability record
DTW→LEX
Detroit to Lexington
- Flights
- 787
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 296 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 787 DTW to LEX flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly DTW to LEX: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.7%, against 77.7% 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
77.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 771 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
74.4% on time across 570 flights
These figures cover 787 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to LEX
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 | 217 | 86.4% | 63 min | 1.38% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 570 | 74.4% | 101 min | 1.58% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on DTW to LEX
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 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 787 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am158 flights76.8%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm282 flights81.9%
- 5pm–8pm4 flights—
- 8pm–5am342 flights74.9%
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 81.9% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 74.9%. 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 342 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DTW to LEX 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 LEX, the best departure window is 2pm–5pm at 81.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 74.9%, a real gap of 7.0 points. All US flights leaving 2pm–5pm ran 71.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am76.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm81.9%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am74.9%
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 27 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 62.1% on time, 27 points below September, the best at 89.3%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 71.7%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 74% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 74%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 3%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 16,278 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 74%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.52% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.51%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.0% 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 296 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.2% on time across 788 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 787 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 LEX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 787 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 77.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 771 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to LEX questions
How often is DTW to LEX 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 22.3% of the 787 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 LEX compared with the rest of the country?
77.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DTW to LEX?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 81.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 74.9%, 7 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 LEX?
July is the weakest month at 62.1% on time, compared with 89.3% in September. Across the year that is 27 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
- LEX to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on DTW to LEX86.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to LEX74.4%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.2%
- ATL to LEX, a related route84.0%
- DTW to ATL, a related route78.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record86.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record74.4%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. DTW to LEX and LEX 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.