Carrier route record
DLMKE→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Milwaukee to Detroit
- Flights
- 576
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on MKE to DTW earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 576 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MKE to DTW record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 93 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 565 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.74%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.6%
Every carrier on MKE to DTW, 1,507 flights
These figures cover 576 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
Delta against every carrier on MKE to DTW
Delta flew 576 of the 1,507 flights on MKE to DTW, about 38% of it. Its 86.9% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 100.0% to SkyWest at 76.0%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 17 | 100.0% | — | 5.88% | A− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 17 | 94.1% | 60 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 576 | 86.9% | 75 min | 1.74% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 897 | 76.0% | 119 min | 1.00% | B |
Departure window
When Delta 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 576 flights.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am264 flights90.8%
- 11am–2pm129 flights84.9%
- 2pm–5pm59 flights83.1%
- 5pm–8pm123 flights82.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.8% of the time, against 82.4% for the evening window. That is 8 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 264 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on MKE to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 72.1% on time, against 100.0% in July. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 81 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.1%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 64% of the 5,560 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%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
64% 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 5,560 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 64 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 5,560 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.74% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.3% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 runs 85.3% on time across 576 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 576 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 Delta on MKE to DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 576 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 86.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 565 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MKE to DTW, every carrier
- Delta on DTW to MKE, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on MKE to DTW76.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.