Carrier route record
OODTW→STL
SkyWest Airlines · Detroit to St. Louis
- Flights
- 186
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 10%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on DTW to STL draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 186 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,088 at 80.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on DTW to STL runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 163 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 181 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on DTW to STL, 1,905 flights
These figures cover 186 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.4% 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 STL
SkyWest flew 186 of the 1,905 flights on DTW to STL, about 10% of it. Its 61.3% on time is 16 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 83.3% to Republic at 0.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 36 | 83.3% | 100 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,088 | 80.1% | 66 min | 1.19% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 593 | 75.9% | 51 min | 0.51% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 186 | 61.3% | 86 min | 1.61% | D |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 26 min | 0.00% | F+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 80.1%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 21 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am116 flights57.5%
- 11am–2pm49 flights78.7%
- 2pm–5pm4 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am16 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 78.7% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 57.5%. 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 116 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DTW to STL through the year
- Jul–Sep 20257 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202526 flights—
- Jan–Mar 2026112 flights55.5%
- Apr–Jun 202641 flights85.0%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. 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 61.3% on time across 186 flights.
Split by quarter, SkyWest on DTW to STL logged 7 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 26 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 112 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 41 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 61.3% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 68% of the 6,042 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.
- 68%Carrier
- 19%Extreme weather
- 12%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 19% 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 3.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,042 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 68%, 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 4,129 of the 6,042 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.61% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.08%.
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. 14.4% 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 440 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 71.7% on time across 186 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 186 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 STL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 186 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 61.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 181 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to STL, every carrier
- SkyWest on STL to DTW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to STL80.1%
- Southwest Airlines on DTW to STL75.9%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.