Carrier route record
DLDTW→MKE
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Milwaukee
- Flights
- 576
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DTW to MKE earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 576 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DTW to MKE record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 77 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 566 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.74%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.3%
Every carrier on DTW to MKE, 1,507 flights
These figures cover 576 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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
Delta against every carrier on DTW to MKE
Delta flew 576 of the 1,507 flights on DTW to MKE, about 38% of it. Its 85.3% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 100.0% to Republic at 70.6%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 17 | 100.0% | — | 5.88% | A− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 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+ |
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 13 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–8am—
- 8am–11am264 flights90.8%
- 11am–2pm129 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm159 flights78.3%
- 5pm–8pm24 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.8% of the time, against 78.3% for the afternoon window. That is 13 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 264 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to MKE through the year
December is the weak month at 67.4% on time, against 97.0% in July. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 81 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 78.4%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 64% of the 4,915 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.
- 64%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 64%, 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 3,126 of the 4,915 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,915 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.74% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% 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.
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 runs 86.9% on time across 576 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 576 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 Delta on DTW to MKE
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 576 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 85.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 566 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to MKE, every carrier
- Delta on MKE to DTW, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to MKE71.8%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- 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
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.