Route reliability record
LEX→DTW
Lexington to Detroit
- Flights
- 788
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 296 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 788 LEX to DTW flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly LEX to DTW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.0% of the time and Thursday flights 93.8%, against 84.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 69 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 778 completed flights
Avg delay
121 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.14%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
84.9% on time across 571 flights
These figures cover 788 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 LEX to DTW
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 | 571 | 84.9% | 137 min | 1.23% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 217 | 82.2% | 85 min | 0.92% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on LEX to DTW
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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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 788 flights.
- 5am–8am281 flights87.0%
- 8am–11am225 flights84.3%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm282 flights81.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 87.0% on time for the 5am–8am window against 81.3% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 282 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LEX to DTW 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 LEX to DTW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 87.0% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 81.3%, a real gap of 5.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am87.0%
- 8–11am84.3%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm81.3%
- 8pm–5am—
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 20 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.
January is the weak month at 74.6% on time, against 94.6% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 93.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.6%, a spread of 17 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 68% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 68%Carrier
- 19%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 6%Late-arriving aircraft
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 14,851 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 68%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 10,000 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.14% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.3% 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 296 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.7% on time across 787 flights, 7 points below 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 788 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 DTW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 788 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 84.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 778 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LEX to DTW questions
How often is LEX to DTW delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.8% of the 788 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is LEX to DTW compared with the rest of the country?
84.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LEX to DTW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 81.3%, 6 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 January delays on LEX to DTW?
January is the weakest month at 74.6% on time, compared with 94.6% in September. Across the year that is 20 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
- DTW to LEX — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on LEX to DTW84.9%
- Republic Airways on LEX to DTW82.2%
- LEX to ATL, a related route87.0%
- ORD to DTW, a related route71.1%
- LEX to ORD, a related route73.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record82.2%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. LEX to DTW and DTW to LEX 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.