Route reliability record
RSW→DTW
Fort Myers to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,773
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,084 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,773 RSW to DTW flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly RSW to DTW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 78.9%, against 74.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,735 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.03%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
78.0% on time across 1,358 flights
These figures cover 1,773 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on RSW 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,358 | 78.0% | 80 min | 1.25% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 335 | 67.1% | 67 min | 5.67% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 80 | 48.8% | 121 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am155 flights86.4%
- 8am–11am270 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm468 flights72.6%
- 2pm–5pm333 flights70.5%
- 5pm–8pm399 flights68.9%
- 8pm–5am148 flights68.5%
Scale runs 60% to 95%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.4% of the time, against 68.5% for the overnight window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 468 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RSW to DTW by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On RSW to DTW, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 88.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 68.5%, a wide gap of 19.9 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am86.4%
- 8–11am88.4%
- 11am–2pm72.6%
- 2–5pm70.5%
- 5–8pm68.9%
- 8pm–5am68.5%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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.
July is the worst month at 60.3% on time, 28 points below October, the best at 88.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 289 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.3%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 36,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 35,515 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 88.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.03% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,084 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.
The return leg runs 74.5% on time across 1,774 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,773 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 88.3% on time and July 60.3%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,735 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RSW to DTW questions
How often is RSW to DTW delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.3% of the 1,773 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is RSW to DTW compared with the rest of the country?
74.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RSW to DTW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 68.5%, 20 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 July delays on RSW to DTW?
July is the weakest month at 60.3% on time, compared with 88.3% in October. Across the year that is 28 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 RSW — the return legseparate record
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on RSW to DTW78.0%
- Spirit Airlines on RSW to DTW67.1%
- RSW to ORD, a related route76.4%
- ORD to DTW, a related route71.1%
- RSW to ATL, a related route85.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record78.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record67.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record48.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. RSW to DTW and DTW to RSW 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.