Route reliability record
DTW→MEM
Detroit to Memphis
- Flights
- 1,051
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 610 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route 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 1,051 DTW to MEM flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 398 at 77.6% on time.
Best time to fly DTW to MEM: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.7% of the time and Thursday flights 82.1%, against 77.6% 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
77.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,029 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
77.6% on time across 398 flights
These figures cover 1,051 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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 MEM
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 31 | 89.7% | 46 min | 6.45% | A− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 42 | 81.0% | 38 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 398 | 77.6% | 81 min | 2.26% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 580 | 76.8% | 89 min | 1.38% | B |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 77.6%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Detroit to Memphis
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DTW → MEMDetroit to Memphis | Delta Air Lines | 75.8% | 77.6% | 2.26% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. DTW → MEMDetroit to Memphis | SkyWest Airlines | 75.7% | 76.8% | 1.38% | 11am–2pm, Thu | — |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 13 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am335 flights80.1%
- 11am–2pm113 flights86.7%
- 2pm–5pm239 flights74.0%
- 5pm–8pm4 flights—
- 8pm–5am360 flights75.2%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 86.7% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 74.0%. 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 360 flights scheduled in it.
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.
December is the weak month at 59.4% on time, against 86.1% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 128 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.2%. 8 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 61% 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.
- 61%Carrier
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
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 19,280 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 12,000 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.81% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.1% 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.
The 610 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 83.7% on time across 1,049 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,051 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 MEM after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,051 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 77.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,029 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to MEM questions
How often is DTW to MEM 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 22.4% of the 1,051 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to MEM?
Delta Air Lines leads at 77.6% on time across 398 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 76.8%, a gap of about a point. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DTW to MEM?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 86.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 74.0%, 13 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 MEM?
December is the weakest month at 59.4% on time, compared with 86.1% in October. 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
- MEM to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to MEM77.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to MEM76.8%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.0%
- ATL to MEM, a related route82.3%
- DTW to ATL, a related route79.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record89.7%
- Republic Airways on-time record81.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record77.6%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DTW to MEM and MEM 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.