Route reliability record
SAT→DTW
San Antonio to Detroit
- Flights
- 934
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,214 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 934 SAT to DTW flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly SAT to DTW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.2% of the time and Friday flights 92.6%, against 90.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 134 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 925 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.75%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
90.7% on time across 934 flights
These figures cover 934 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SAT 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 | 934 | 90.7% | 67 min | 0.75% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SAT 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.
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 934 flights.
- 5am–8am357 flights95.2%
- 8am–11am8 flights—
- 11am–2pm210 flights88.4%
- 2pm–5pm358 flights87.4%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 95.2% on time for the 5am–8am window against 87.4% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 358 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SAT 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 SAT to DTW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.2% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 87.4%, a real gap of 7.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.2%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm88.4%
- 2–5pm87.4%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 934 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
February is the weak month at 83.9% on time, against 95.4% in August. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 4 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 56% of the 5,749 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,247 of the 5,749 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,749 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.75%, below the national 1.89% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,214 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.4% on time across 934 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 934 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DTW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 934 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 90.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 925 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAT to DTW questions
How often is SAT to DTW delayed?
About one flight in ten arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 9.3% of the 934 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SAT to DTW compared with the rest of the country?
90.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 13 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SAT to DTW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 87.4%, 8 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 February delays on SAT to DTW?
February is the weakest month at 83.9% on time, compared with 95.4% in August. Across the year that is 12 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 SAT — the return legseparate record
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- SAT to DFW, a related route79.4%
- ORD to DTW, a related route71.1%
- SAT to DEN, a related route82.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record90.7%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SAT to DTW and DTW to SAT 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.