Route reliability record
MCI→DTW
Kansas City to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,351
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 629 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,351 MCI to DTW flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Best time to fly MCI to DTW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.7% of the time and Saturday flights 94.5%, against 87.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 100 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,329 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
87.5% on time across 1,323 flights
These figures cover 1,351 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MCI 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,323 | 87.5% | 85 min | 1.21% | A |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 76.9% | 46 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am357 flights88.1%
- 11am–2pm16 flights—
- 2pm–5pm265 flights83.2%
- 5pm–8pm348 flights82.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.7% of the time, against 82.4% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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 76.6% on time, against 93.8% in May. 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 126 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 94.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.1%. 13 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 5%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 13,860 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 5,624 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.18% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.44%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 629 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.2% on time across 1,351 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,351 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DTW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 93.8% on time and December 76.6%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,329 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCI to DTW questions
How often is MCI to DTW delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.4% of the 1,351 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is MCI to DTW compared with the rest of the country?
87.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 10 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCI to DTW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 82.4%, 12 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 MCI to DTW?
December is the weakest month at 76.6% on time, compared with 93.8% in May. Across the year that is 17 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 MCI — the return legseparate record
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- MCI to DEN, a related route76.1%
- ORD to DTW, a related route70.6%
- MCI to ORD, a related route74.7%
- American Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record100.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. MCI to DTW and DTW to MCI 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.