Route reliability record
DTW→MCI
Detroit to Kansas City
- Flights
- 1,351
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 629 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,351 DTW to MCI flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly DTW to MCI: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.0%, against 80.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
80.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,335 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
80.3% on time across 1,325 flights
These figures cover 1,351 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to MCI
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 12 | 83.3% | 16 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,325 | 80.3% | 72 min | 1.13% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 12 | 66.7% | 31 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am372 flights87.2%
- 11am–2pm261 flights83.8%
- 2pm–5pm352 flights77.5%
- 5pm–8pm104 flights67.3%
- 8pm–5am261 flights75.5%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 87.2% of the time, against 67.3% for the evening window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 372 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 65.7% on time, against 89.7% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 125 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.6%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 19,000 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.
- 56%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, 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 19,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 18,750 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.2% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 629 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.6% on time across 1,351 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,351 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 MCI 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. October runs 89.7% on time and December 65.7%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,335 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to MCI questions
How often is DTW to MCI delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.8% of the 1,351 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DTW to MCI compared with the rest of the country?
80.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points 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 MCI?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 87.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 67.3%, 20 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 MCI?
December is the weakest month at 65.7% on time, compared with 89.7% in October. Across the year that is 24 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
- MCI to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.0%
- DEN to MCI, a related route75.5%
- DTW to ATL, a related route79.0%
- American Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record100.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record83.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. DTW to MCI and MCI 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.