Carrier route record

OOIND→DTW

SkyWest Airlines · Indianapolis to Detroit

Flights: 729
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 74%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on IND to DTW lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 729 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on IND to DTW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 718 completed flights

Avg delay

102 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.51%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.7%

Every carrier on IND to DTW, 979 flights

These figures cover 729 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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

SkyWest against every carrier on IND to DTW

SkyWest flew 729 of the 979 flights on IND to DTW, most of the route. Its 78.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 83.1% to SkyWest at 78.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on IND to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Linesthin sample	59	83.1%	102 min	0.00%	B+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	191	82.0%	48 min	1.05%	B
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	729	78.8%	102 min	1.51%	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 729 flights.

5am–8am77 flights87.3%
8am–11am175 flights78.6%
11am–2pm8 flights—
2pm–5pm363 flights77.6%
5pm–8pm106 flights79.0%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.3% of the time, against 77.6% 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 363 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on IND to DTW through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, January worst

January is the weak month at 46.2% on time, against 95.1% in September. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 104 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 69.7%. 15 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 63% of the 16,000 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.

Carrier
63%
Extreme weather
28%
National Airspace System
9%

Extreme weather accounts for 28% 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 4.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,518 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 63%, 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 9,783 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.51% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 11.3% 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 231 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 77.1% on time across 729 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. 729 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 IND to DTW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 729 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 78.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 718 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures