Carrier route record

DLMSN→DTW

Delta Air Lines · Madison to Detroit

Flights: 360
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 40%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on MSN 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 7 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 360 flights, with a median arrival 17 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's MSN to DTW record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights

Avg delay

95 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.39%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.7%

Every carrier on MSN to DTW, 906 flights

These figures cover 360 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 17 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 MSN to DTW

Delta flew 360 of the 906 flights on MSN to DTW, about 40% of it. Its 85.0% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 100.0% to SkyWest at 79.5%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSN to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	2	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample	360	85.0%	95 min	1.39%	A
SkyWest Airlines	544	79.5%	128 min	0.37%	B+

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 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–8am67 flights95.5%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm135 flights81.8%
2pm–5pm3 flights—
5pm–8pm155 flights83.7%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% 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 81.8% on time against 95.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 155 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on MSN to DTW through the year

Jul–Sep 202596 flights84.2%
Oct–Dec 2025125 flights83.9%
Jan–Mar 202626 flights—
Apr–Jun 2026113 flights85.5%

Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 85.0% on time across 360 flights.

Quarter by quarter Delta on MSN to DTW held fairly steady: 84.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 83.9% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 85.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 2 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 92.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.1%. 19 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 52% of the 5,023 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
Carrier
45%
National Airspace System
2%
Extreme weather
1%

52% 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 5,023 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 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 5,023 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 2,272 of the 5,023 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.1% 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.

At 311 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 80.3% on time across 360 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 360 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 MSN to DTW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 360 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 85.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 354 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures