Route reliability record
MKE→DTW
Milwaukee to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,507
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 237 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, 3 points 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 1,507 MKE to DTW flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 576 at 86.9% on time.
Best time to fly MKE to DTW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.7% of the time and Thursday flights 88.1%, against 80.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,484 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.33%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
86.9% on time across 576 flights
These figures cover 1,507 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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 MKE to DTW
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 86.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 76.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 897 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 17 | 100.0% | — | 5.88% | A− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 17 | 94.1% | 60 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 576 | 86.9% | 75 min | 1.74% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 897 | 76.0% | 119 min | 1.00% | B |
Delta leads SkyWest by 11 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 Milwaukee 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. MKE → DTWMilwaukee to Detroit | Delta Air Lines | 85.4% | 86.9% | 1.74% | 8am–11am, Thu | — |
| 2. MKE → DTWMilwaukee to Detroit | SkyWest Airlines | 75.2% | 76.0% | 1.00% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
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 12 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights79.8%
- 8am–11am360 flights86.7%
- 11am–2pm291 flights82.2%
- 2pm–5pm121 flights78.5%
- 5pm–8pm370 flights74.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.7% of the time, against 74.9% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 370 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 92.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 148 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.0%. 12 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 66% of the 31,000 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.
- 66%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 30,939 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, 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 20,000 of the 31,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.33% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.8% 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 237 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.3% on time across 1,507 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,507 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. September runs 92.0% on time and March 66.2%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,484 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MKE to DTW questions
How often is MKE to DTW delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.4% of the 1,507 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 MKE to DTW?
Delta Air Lines leads at 86.9% on time across 576 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 76.0%, a gap of 11 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 MKE to DTW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.9%, 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 March delays on MKE to DTW?
March is the weakest month at 66.2% on time, compared with 92.0% in September. Across the year that is 26 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 MKE — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on MKE to DTW86.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on MKE to DTW76.0%
- MKE to ORD, a related route67.4%
- ORD to DTW, a related route70.6%
- MKE to DEN, a related route78.1%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record94.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.9%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MKE to DTW and DTW to MKE are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed MKE 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.