Route reliability record
DTW→RDU
Detroit to Raleigh
- Flights
- 1,480
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 501 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,480 DTW to RDU flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly DTW to RDU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.4%, against 84.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,455 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.69%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
84.6% on time across 1,333 flights
These figures cover 1,480 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to RDU
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 | 33 | 84.8% | 52 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,333 | 84.6% | 60 min | 1.58% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 114 | 80.0% | 61 min | 3.51% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on DTW to RDU
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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 half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am257 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am408 flights87.8%
- 11am–2pm39 flights87.2%
- 2pm–5pm365 flights82.8%
- 5pm–8pm47 flights79.5%
- 8pm–5am364 flights75.7%
Scale runs 65% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.2% of the time, against 75.7% 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 408 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DTW to RDU by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DTW to RDU, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 75.7%, a wide gap of 17.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.2%
- 8–11am87.8%
- 11am–2pm87.2%
- 2–5pm82.8%
- 5–8pm79.5%
- 8pm–5am75.7%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 72.1% on time, against 90.2% in June. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.8%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 57% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,823 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 13,795 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.69% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 501 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 88.6% on time across 1,480 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,480 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 RDU 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. June runs 90.2% on time and December 72.1%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,455 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to RDU questions
How often is DTW to RDU delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.7% of the 1,480 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DTW to RDU compared with the rest of the country?
84.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DTW to RDU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 75.7%, 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 RDU?
December is the weakest month at 72.1% on time, compared with 90.2% in June. Across the year that is 18 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
- RDU to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to RDU84.6%
- Frontier Airlines on DTW to RDU80.0%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.2%
- ATL to RDU, a related route80.0%
- DTW to ATL, a related route78.9%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record84.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record80.0%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. DTW to RDU and RDU 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.