Route reliability record
DTW→TVC
Detroit to Traverse City
- Flights
- 1,079
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 207 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,079 DTW to TVC flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 701 at 76.3% on time.
Best time to fly DTW to TVC: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.8% of the time and Saturday flights 80.1%, against 75.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,054 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.13%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
76.3% on time across 701 flights
These figures cover 1,079 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to TVC
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 701 | 76.3% | 83 min | 2.28% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 378 | 75.2% | 64 min | 1.85% | B |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 76.3%, about a point 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.
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 | SkyWest Airlines | 74.6% | 76.3% | 2.28% | 8am–11am, Thu | — |
| 2. DTW → TVCDetroit to Traverse City | Delta Air Lines | 73.8% | 75.2% | 1.85% | 8pm–5am, Fri | DL 2424 22:50 |
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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,079 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am300 flights81.8%
- 11am–2pm81 flights72.5%
- 2pm–5pm334 flights72.4%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am363 flights75.0%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 81.8% of the time, against 72.4% for the afternoon window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
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. July was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.6%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 65% of the 19,000 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.
- 65%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 9%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 19,347 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, 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 13,000 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.13% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.3% 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 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 76.4% on time across 1,079 flights, within half a point 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. 1,079 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. 1,079 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 75.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,054 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 24.1% of the 1,079 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to TVC?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 76.3% on time across 701 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 75.2%, a gap of about a point. 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 81.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 72.4%, 9 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
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to TVC76.3%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to TVC75.2%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.0%
- ORD to TVC, a related route66.8%
- DTW to ATL, a related route79.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record75.2%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.