Carrier route record
OODTW→TVC
SkyWest Airlines · Detroit to Traverse City
- Flights
- 701
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 65%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on DTW to TVC lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 701 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on DTW to TVC from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 683 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.9%
Every carrier on DTW to TVC, 1,079 flights
These figures cover 701 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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 TVC
SkyWest flew 701 of the 1,079 flights on DTW to TVC, most of the route. Its 76.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 76.3% to Delta at 75.2%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 701 | 76.3% | 83 min | 2.28% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 378 | 75.2% | 64 min | 1.85% | B |
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
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 701 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am300 flights81.8%
- 11am–2pm81 flights72.5%
- 2pm–5pm319 flights72.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
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 72.3% for the afternoon window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 319 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DTW to TVC through the year
January is the weak month at 47.2% on time, against 93.0% 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 84 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 71.4%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 75% of the 14,000 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.
- 75%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 13,505 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 75%, 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 10,000 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.28% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
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. 10.8% 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 73.4% on time across 701 flights, within 3 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. 701 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 TVC
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 701 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 76.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 683 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to TVC, every carrier
- SkyWest on TVC to DTW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to TVC75.2%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) 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.