Route reliability record
RSW→DTW
Fort Myers to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,820
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,084 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,820 RSW to DTW flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,355 at 78.5% on time.
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 79.7%, against 75.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
75.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,779 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
78.5% on time across 1,355 flights
These figures cover 1,820 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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
Which airline is most reliable on RSW to DTW
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 78.5% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 68.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 385 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,355 | 78.5% | 80 min | 1.40% | B |
| Spirit Airlines | 385 | 68.3% | 66 min | 4.94% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 80 | 48.8% | 121 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.9% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fort Myers to Detroit
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. RSW → DTWFort Myers to Detroit | Delta Air Lines | 77.4% | 78.5% | 1.40% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. RSW → DTWFort Myers to Detroit | Spirit Airlines | 64.9% | 68.3% | 4.94% | 5pm–8pm, Thu | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am155 flights86.4%
- 8am–11am270 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm468 flights70.4%
- 2pm–5pm345 flights71.6%
- 5pm–8pm428 flights72.5%
- 8pm–5am154 flights68.5%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
October is the best month on the calendar at 88.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 289 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.9%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 35,668 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 36,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.09% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.3% 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.
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. 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 runs 74.7% on time across 1,820 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 1,820 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 March 65.2%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,779 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 25.0% of the 1,820 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on RSW to DTW?
Delta Air Lines leads at 78.5% on time across 1,355 flights. Spirit Airlines is at the other end on 68.3%, a gap of 10 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
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 March delays on RSW to DTW?
March is the weakest month at 65.2% on time, compared with 88.3% in October. Across the year that is 23 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 DTW78.5%
- Spirit Airlines on RSW to DTW68.3%
- RSW to ORD, a related route76.5%
- ORD to DTW, a related route70.6%
- RSW to ATL, a related route85.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record78.5%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record68.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record48.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.