Route reliability record
DTW→TVC
Detroit to Traverse City
- Flights
- 1,062
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 207 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,062 DTW to TVC flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 369 at 77.3% on time.
Best time to fly DTW to TVC: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 78.3% of the time and Saturday flights 80.0%, against 74.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,037 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
77.3% on time across 369 flights
These figures cover 1,062 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 TVC
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 369 | 77.3% | 61 min | 1.90% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 693 | 72.3% | 82 min | 2.31% | C |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 77.3%, 5 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 TVC
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 Traverse City
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 → TVCDetroit to Traverse City | Delta Air Lines | 75.8% | 77.3% | 1.90% | 8pm–5am, Fri | DL 2424 22:50 |
| 2. DTW → TVCDetroit to Traverse City | SkyWest Airlines | 70.6% | 72.3% | 2.31% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 10 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am272 flights78.3%
- 11am–2pm92 flights68.1%
- 2pm–5pm334 flights69.3%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am363 flights76.7%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 68.1% on time against 78.3% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DTW to TVC 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 TVC, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 78.3% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 68.1%, a wide gap of 10.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am78.3%
- 11am–2pm68.1%
- 2–5pm69.3%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am76.7%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 38 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 56.7% on time, against 94.4% in October. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 70.5%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 63% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
- 13%National Airspace System
- 9%Late-arriving aircraft
- 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 20,296 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 63%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.17% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.4% 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 207 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 runs 76.1% on time across 1,062 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,062 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 TVC after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,062 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 74.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,037 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to TVC questions
How often is DTW to TVC 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 25.9% of the 1,062 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to TVC?
Delta Air Lines leads at 77.3% on time across 369 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 72.3%, a gap of 5 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 TVC?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 78.3% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 68.1%, 10 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 TVC?
December is the weakest month at 56.7% on time, compared with 94.4% in October. Across the year that is 38 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
- TVC to DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to TVC77.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to TVC72.3%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.2%
- ORD to TVC, a related route67.4%
- DTW to ATL, a related route78.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record77.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.3%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. DTW to TVC and TVC 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.