Carrier route record
OOLEX→DTW
SkyWest Airlines · Lexington to Detroit
- Flights
- 521
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 66%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on LEX to DTW lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 521 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's LEX to DTW record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 514 completed flights
Avg delay
120 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.34%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.6%
Every carrier on LEX to DTW, 786 flights
These figures cover 521 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 LEX to DTW
SkyWest flew 521 of the 786 flights on LEX to DTW, most of the route. Its 82.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 82.9% to Republic at 82.1%. One 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 521 | 82.9% | 120 min | 1.34% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 265 | 82.1% | 88 min | 0.75% | B+ |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on LEX to DTW
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 521 flights.
- 5am–8am236 flights85.3%
- 8am–11am255 flights82.2%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm30 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5am–8am window is the strongest at 85.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.
Across the year
SkyWest on LEX to DTW through the year
July is the worst month at 64.5% on time, 36 points below April, the best at 100.0%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 90.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.0%. 17 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 80% of the 11,000 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.
- 80%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 4%National Airspace System
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 10,526 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 80%, 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 8,437 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.34% 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. 9.9% 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 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 73.9% on time across 520 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 521 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 LEX to DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 521 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 82.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 514 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.