Route reliability record
SBN→DTW
South Bend to Detroit
- Flights
- 711
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 157 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.2 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 711 SBN to DTW flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
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
79.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 701 completed flights
Avg delay
133 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.13%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
79.5% on time across 711 flights
These figures cover 711 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 SBN 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 711 | 79.5% | 133 min | 1.13% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on SBN 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly South Bend to Detroit
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SBN → DTWSouth Bend to Detroit | SkyWest Airlines | 78.6% | 79.5% | 1.13% | 8am–11am, Thu | OO 3837 08:20 |
| 2. AZO → DTWKalamazoo to Detroit | SkyWest Airlines | 75.5% | 76.8% | 1.71% | 5am–8am, Sat | OO 3980 05:30 |
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 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 711 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am365 flights79.7%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm346 flights79.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 79.7% on time. The full set of windows spans half a point.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 45 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 46.9% on time, against 91.9% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.3%. 20 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 77% of the 19,000 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.
- 77%Carrier
- 16%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 16% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 19,104 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 77%, 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 15,000 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.13% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
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. 12.4% 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.
At 157 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.4% on time across 712 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 711 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. 711 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 79.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 701 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBN to DTW questions
How often is SBN to DTW delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.5% of the 711 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 2.2 hours on average.
How reliable is SBN to DTW compared with the rest of the country?
79.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
Does the departure time change the odds on SBN to DTW?
Not by much in this data. Every departure window falls within half a point of the others, so there is no hour worth rearranging a trip for. The overall rate of 79.5% is the figure to plan against.
How bad are December delays on SBN to DTW?
December is the weakest month at 46.9% on time, compared with 91.9% in August. Across the year that is 45 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 SBN — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- SBN to ORD, a related route65.0%
- ORD to DTW, a related route70.6%
- SBN to CLT, a related route79.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.5%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SBN to DTW and DTW to SBN 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.