Route reliability record
MEM→DTW
Memphis to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,049
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 610 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, 6 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 1,049 MEM to DTW flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 396 at 90.4% on time.
Best time to fly MEM to DTW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.7% of the time and Friday flights 86.5%, against 83.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,029 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
90.4% on time across 396 flights
These figures cover 1,049 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% 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
Which airline is most reliable on MEM to DTW
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 90.4% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 78.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 581 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 92.9% | 33 min | 6.67% | A− |
| Delta Air Lines | 396 | 90.4% | 123 min | 2.27% | A |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 42 | 81.0% | 32 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 581 | 78.8% | 108 min | 1.38% | B |
Delta leads SkyWest by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Memphis to Detroit
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MEM → DTWMemphis to Detroit | Delta Air Lines | 88.3% | 90.4% | 2.27% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 2. MEM → DTWMemphis to Detroit | SkyWest Airlines | 77.7% | 78.8% | 1.38% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 21 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am364 flights92.7%
- 8am–11am287 flights81.4%
- 11am–2pm55 flights72.2%
- 2pm–5pm127 flights87.1%
- 5pm–8pm216 flights72.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 72.2% on time against 92.7% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 65.0% on time, against 93.9% in November. 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 128 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 80.9%. 6 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. Carrier accounts for 64% of the 18,000 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.
- 64%Carrier
- 26%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 3%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 26% 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 4.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 17,972 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 64%, 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 11,000 of the 18,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.81% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.10%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.8% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 610 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 77.6% on time across 1,051 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,049 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. 1,049 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 83.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,029 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MEM to DTW questions
How often is MEM 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 16.3% of the 1,049 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MEM to DTW?
Delta Air Lines leads at 90.4% on time across 396 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 78.8%, a gap of 12 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MEM to DTW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.7% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 72.2%, 21 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 MEM to DTW?
January is the weakest month at 65.0% on time, compared with 93.9% in November. Across the year that is 29 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 MEM — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MEM to DTW90.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on MEM to DTW78.8%
- MEM to ATL, a related route87.4%
- ORD to DTW, a related route70.6%
- MEM to ORD, a related route76.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record92.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record90.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record81.0%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. MEM to DTW and DTW to MEM are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed MEM to DTW’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.