Carrier route record
OOMKE→DTW
SkyWest Airlines · Milwaukee to Detroit
- Flights
- 897
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 60%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on MKE to DTW lands a B, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four 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 897 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on MKE to DTW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 886 completed flights
Avg delay
119 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.6%
Every carrier on MKE to DTW, 1,507 flights
These figures cover 897 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.7% 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 MKE to DTW
SkyWest flew 897 of the 1,507 flights on MKE to DTW, most of the route. Its 76.0% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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 | 576 | 86.9% | 75 min | 1.74% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 897 | 76.0% | 119 min | 1.00% | B |
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 897 flights.
- 5am–8am364 flights79.7%
- 8am–11am86 flights72.9%
- 11am–2pm146 flights78.5%
- 2pm–5pm61 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm240 flights70.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 79.7% of the time, against 70.3% for the evening window. That is 9 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 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on MKE to DTW through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. April was the busiest month here, with 111 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 85.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.2%. 18 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 75% of the 25,000 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.
- 75%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 25,319 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 75%, 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 19,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
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. 14.7% 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.8% on time across 897 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 897 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 MKE to DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 897 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 76.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 886 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MKE to DTW, every carrier
- SkyWest on DTW to MKE, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MKE to DTW86.9%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.