Carrier route record
UASFO→DTW
United Airlines · San Francisco to Detroit
- Flights
- 406
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SFO to DTW earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 406 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's SFO to DTW record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 406 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.7%
Every carrier on SFO to DTW, 1,791 flights
These figures cover 406 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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
United against every carrier on SFO to DTW
United flew 406 of the 1,791 flights on SFO to DTW, about 23% of it. Its 85.5% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.5% to Delta at 75.4%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 406 | 85.5% | 50 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,385 | 75.4% | 53 min | 0.79% | B+ |
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Departure window
When United runs best on this route
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 406 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am189 flights86.2%
- 11am–2pm111 flights86.5%
- 2pm–5pm40 flights80.0%
- 5pm–8pm2 flights—
- 8pm–5am64 flights85.9%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 86.5% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 80.0%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 189 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SFO to DTW through the year
January is the weak month at 71.0% on time, against 93.5% in June. 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 49 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 77.4%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on SFO to DTW runs when it is late
United on SFO to DTW often beats the schedule: 150 of 406 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 59 late arrivals split 25 under half an hour, 16 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 18 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early150 flights36.9%
- Within 15 min197 flights48.5%
- 15–29 min late25 flights6.2%
- 30–59 min late16 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late14 flights3.4%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 406 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 74 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 25 still arrived on time. 10 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on SFO to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 August 2026, 3 hours 9 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 August 2026 | 3 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 March 2026 | 2 hours 45 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 December 2025 | 2 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 January 2026 | 2 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 February 2026 | 1 hour 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 2,956 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,956 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 to one. The split is drawn from 2,956 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% 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.
At 2,079 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.9% on time across 407 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 406 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.
What to do with this
Booking United on SFO to DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 406 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 85.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 406 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to DTW, every carrier
- United on DTW to SFO, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on SFO to DTW75.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.