Route reliability record
DTW→MSN
Detroit to Madison
- Flights
- 906
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 311 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 906 DTW to MSN flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly DTW to MSN: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 77.0% of the time and Thursday flights 79.6%, against 74.3% 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
74.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 896 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
70.4% on time across 544 flights
These figures cover 906 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 MSN
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 360 | 80.3% | 74 min | 1.11% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 544 | 70.4% | 82 min | 0.74% | C+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 23 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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 11 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–11am278 flights76.4%
- 11am–2pm193 flights77.0%
- 2pm–5pm152 flights74.0%
- 5pm–8pm101 flights66.0%
- 8pm–5am182 flights73.3%
Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 77.0% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 66.0%. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 278 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 49 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.
January is the weak month at 40.5% on time, against 89.8% in April. 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 114 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 79.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.6%. 11 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 66% of the 18,000 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.
- 66%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
- 10%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 18,240 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, 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 18,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.88%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
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. 11.5% 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 311 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.7% on time across 906 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 906 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 MSN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 906 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 74.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 896 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to MSN questions
How often is DTW to MSN delayed?
About 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 25.7% of the 906 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 MSN compared with the rest of the country?
74.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DTW to MSN?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 77.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 66.0%, 11 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 January delays on DTW to MSN?
January is the weakest month at 40.5% on time, compared with 89.8% in April. Across the year that is 49 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
- MSN to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to MSN80.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to MSN70.4%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.0%
- ORD to MSN, a related route71.4%
- DTW to ATL, a related route79.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record80.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record70.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record50.0%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DTW to MSN and MSN 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.