Carrier route record
AADTW→MIA
American Airlines · Detroit to Miami
- Flights
- 394
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 22%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DTW to MIA 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 394 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's DTW to MIA record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 118 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 388 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.27%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.5%
Every carrier on DTW to MIA, 1,815 flights
These figures cover 394 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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
American against every carrier on DTW to MIA
American flew 394 of the 1,815 flights on DTW to MIA, about 22% of it. Its 89.4% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 89.4% to Frontier at 66.7%. Four 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 394 | 89.4% | 102 min | 1.27% | A |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 87 | 79.3% | 67 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 295 | 79.3% | 66 min | 3.39% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines | 965 | 78.4% | 55 min | 0.93% | B+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 10 | 70.0% | 30 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 64 | 66.7% | 96 min | 1.56% | C |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on DTW to MIA
Departure window
When American 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 394 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split American's DTW to MIA record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 89.4% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
American on DTW to MIA through the year
January is the weak month at 76.1% on time, against 100.0% in May. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 49 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 98.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.1%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 4,180 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 1,914 of the 4,180 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,180 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.27% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,145 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 68.3% on time across 394 flights, 21 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 21 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 394 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 American on DTW to MIA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 394 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 89.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 388 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to MIA, every carrier
- American on MIA to DTW, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to MIA79.3%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to MIA78.4%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.