Carrier route record

OODTW→MSN

SkyWest Airlines · Detroit to Madison

Flights: 544
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 60%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on DTW to MSN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 544 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on DTW to MSN runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 72 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 538 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.74%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.3%

Every carrier on DTW to MSN, 906 flights

These figures cover 544 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.4% 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

SkyWest against every carrier on DTW to MSN

SkyWest flew 544 of the 906 flights on DTW to MSN, most of the route. Its 70.4% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.3% to Republic at 50.0%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DTW to MSN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Linesthin sample	360	80.3%	74 min	1.11%	B
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	544	70.4%	82 min	0.74%	C+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	2	50.0%	23 min	0.00%	F+

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 39 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–11am272 flights76.2%
11am–2pm61 flights68.9%
2pm–5pm64 flights66.1%
5pm–8pm32 flights37.5%
8pm–5am115 flights69.3%

Scale runs 30% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 37.5% on time, against 76.2% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 272 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on DTW to MSN through the year

Jul–Sep 2025161 flights80.7%
Oct–Dec 2025142 flights71.5%
Jan–Mar 2026191 flights54.7%
Apr–Jun 202650 flights94.0%

Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 70.4% on time across 544 flights.

SkyWest on DTW to MSN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 94.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 54.7%, a swing of 39 points on roughly 136 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 76.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 61.4%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 69% of the 13,000 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.

Carrier
69%
Extreme weather
20%
National Airspace System
11%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 13,023 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 69%, 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 8,973 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.74%, 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.4% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.5% on time across 544 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 544 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 SkyWest on DTW to MSN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 544 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 70.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 538 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures