Route reliability record
MSP→DTW
Minneapolis to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,932
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 528 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 5 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,932 MSP to DTW flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly MSP to DTW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.9%, against 82.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,919 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.52%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
82.1% on time across 1,887 flights
These figures cover 1,932 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Which airline is most reliable on MSP to DTW
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 | 45 | 90.9% | 116 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,887 | 82.1% | 65 min | 0.53% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on MSP to DTW
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 38 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–8am391 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am367 flights89.0%
- 11am–2pm382 flights89.2%
- 2pm–5pm265 flights81.9%
- 5pm–8pm489 flights65.4%
- 8pm–5am38 flights55.3%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.3% on time, against 93.6% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 489 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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.
December is the weak month at 67.5% on time, against 89.1% in October. 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 196 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.2%. 10 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 60% of the 22,000 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.
- 60%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, 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 13,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 22,310 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.52%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 528 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 78.7% on time across 1,927 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,932 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. October runs 89.1% on time and December 67.5%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,919 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSP to DTW questions
How often is MSP 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 17.7% of the 1,932 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MSP to DTW compared with the rest of the country?
82.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MSP to DTW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.3%, 38 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 December delays on MSP to DTW?
December is the weakest month at 67.5% on time, compared with 89.1% in October. Across the year that is 22 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 MSP — the return legseparate record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- MSP to ORD, a related route69.9%
- ORD to DTW, a related route70.6%
- MSP to DEN, a related route77.6%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record90.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record82.1%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. MSP to DTW and DTW to MSP are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.