Carrier route record

YXDTW→LEX

Republic Airways · Detroit to Lexington

Flights: 265
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 34%
Carriers: 2

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

Republic on DTW to LEX earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 265 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Republic's DTW to LEX record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 94 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 261 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.13%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.3%

Every carrier on DTW to LEX, 785 flights

These figures cover 265 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Republic against every carrier on DTW to LEX

Republic flew 265 of the 785 flights on DTW to LEX, about 34% of it. Its 87.0% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 87.0% to SkyWest at 73.9%.

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 LEX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways (this page)thin sample	265	87.0%	67 min	1.13%	A
SkyWest Airlines	520	73.9%	111 min	1.73%	C

Departure window

When Republic 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 265 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Republic's DTW to LEX record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 87.0% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Republic on DTW to LEX through the year

Jul–Sep 202584 flights86.9%
Oct–Dec 202525 flights—
Jan–Mar 202686 flights86.7%
Apr–Jun 202670 flights84.1%

Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 87.0% on time across 265 flights.

Quarter by quarter Republic on DTW to LEX held fairly steady: 86.9% in Jul–Sep 2025, 86.7% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 84.1% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 3 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 94.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.5%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Republic runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 61% of the 2,274 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
61%
Late-arriving aircraft
19%
Extreme weather
13%
National Airspace System
8%

Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,274 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 61%, 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 1,386 of the 2,274 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.13% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 82.1% on time across 265 flights, 5 points below 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 265 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 Republic on DTW to LEX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 265 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 87.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 261 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