Route reliability record
DTW→MKE
Detroit to Milwaukee
- Flights
- 1,507
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 237 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 1,507 DTW to MKE flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 576 at 85.3% on time.
Best time to fly DTW to MKE: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.8% of the time and Thursday flights 81.6%, against 77.3% 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
77.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,486 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
85.3% on time across 576 flights
These figures cover 1,507 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 MKE
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 85.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 71.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 897 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 17 | 100.0% | — | 5.88% | A− |
| Delta Air Lines | 576 | 85.3% | 59 min | 1.74% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 897 | 71.8% | 95 min | 0.78% | C+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 17 | 70.6% | 26 min | 0.00% | C+ |
The spread between Delta and SkyWest is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Detroit to Milwaukee
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 → MKEDetroit to Milwaukee | Delta Air Lines | 83.8% | 85.3% | 1.74% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. DTW → MKEDetroit to Milwaukee | SkyWest Airlines | 71.2% | 71.8% | 0.78% | 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 18 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am364 flights86.8%
- 11am–2pm311 flights79.9%
- 2pm–5pm265 flights77.1%
- 5pm–8pm204 flights71.9%
- 8pm–5am363 flights68.6%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.8% of the time, against 68.6% for the overnight window. That is 18 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 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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 55.9% on time, against 91.1% in September. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 148 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 81.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 71.7%. 10 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 70% of the 29,000 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.
- 70%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 12%National Airspace System
- 3%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Security
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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 28,747 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 70%, 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 20,000 of the 29,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
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. 10.5% 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.
At 237 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.6% on time across 1,507 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,507 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 MKE 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. September runs 91.1% on time and December 55.9%, a swing of 35 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,486 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to MKE questions
How often is DTW to MKE 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 22.7% of the 1,507 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 MKE?
Delta Air Lines leads at 85.3% on time across 576 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 71.8%, a gap of 14 points. 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 MKE?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 68.6%, 18 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 MKE?
December is the weakest month at 55.9% on time, compared with 91.1% in September. Across the year that is 35 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
- MKE to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to MKE85.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to MKE71.8%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.0%
- ORD to MKE, a related route64.1%
- DTW to ATL, a related route79.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record85.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.8%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DTW to MKE and MKE 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.