Route reliability record
DTW→SFO
Detroit to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,792
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,079 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,792 DTW to SFO flights, of which United Airlines flew 407 at 70.9% on time.
Best time to fly DTW to SFO: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 74.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 75.8%, against 66.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,780 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.67%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
70.9% on time across 407 flights
These figures cover 1,792 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to SFO
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 407 | 70.9% | 81 min | 0.49% | C+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,385 | 65.1% | 61 min | 0.72% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 70.9%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on DTW to SFO
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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Detroit to San Francisco
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 → SFODetroit to San Francisco | United Airlines | 70.6% | 70.9% | 0.49% | 5pm–8pm, Tue | — |
| 2. DTW → SFODetroit to San Francisco | Delta Air Lines | 64.6% | 65.1% | 0.72% | 8am–11am, Tue | DL 361 08:30 |
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 24 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am199 flights67.7%
- 8am–11am385 flights74.6%
- 11am–2pm303 flights68.0%
- 2pm–5pm288 flights68.8%
- 5pm–8pm309 flights67.4%
- 8pm–5am308 flights50.5%
Scale runs 40% to 80%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.5% on time, against 74.6% 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 385 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DTW to SFO 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 SFO, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 74.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 50.5%, a wide gap of 24.1 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am67.7%
- 8–11am74.6%
- 11am–2pm68.0%
- 2–5pm68.8%
- 5–8pm67.4%
- 8pm–5am50.5%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 51 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.
June is the worst month at 42.6% on time, 51 points below September, the best at 93.8%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 187 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 60.5%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 44% of the 39,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%National Airspace System
- 37%Carrier
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
44% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 17,000 minutes out of 39,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 38,972 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 14,000 of the 39,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.67%, below the national 1.89% 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
10.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 2,079 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.7% on time across 1,791 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,792 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 SFO 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 93.8% on time and June 42.6%, a swing of 51 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,780 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to SFO questions
How often is DTW to SFO delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 33.6% of the 1,792 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to SFO?
United Airlines leads at 70.9% on time across 407 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 65.1%, a gap of 6 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 SFO?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 74.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 50.5%, 24 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 June delays on DTW to SFO?
June is the weakest month at 42.6% on time, compared with 93.8% in September. Across the year that is 51 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
- SFO to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on DTW to SFO70.9%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to SFO65.1%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.2%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- DTW to ATL, a related route78.9%
- United Airlines on-time record70.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record65.1%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DTW to SFO and SFO 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.