Carrier route record

OOSTL→DTW

SkyWest Airlines · St. Louis to Detroit

Flights: 183
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on STL to DTW sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 183 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,104 at 88.2% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so SkyWest on STL to DTW runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 60 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 181 completed flights

Avg delay

110 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.09%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

81.1%

Every carrier on STL to DTW, 1,899 flights

These figures cover 183 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on STL to DTW

SkyWest flew 183 of the 1,899 flights on STL to DTW, about 10% of it. Its 71.3% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 100.0% to SkyWest at 71.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 88.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 71.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 611 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on STL to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines	1,104	88.2%	111 min	1.81%	A
Southwest Airlines	611	71.5%	59 min	0.16%	C+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	183	71.3%	110 min	1.09%	C

The spread between Delta and Southwest is 17 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 17 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 19 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am16 flights—
8am–11am117 flights63.8%
11am–2pm47 flights83.0%
2pm–5pm2 flights—
5pm–8pm1 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% 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 83.0% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 63.8%. 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 117 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on STL to DTW through the year

Jul–Sep 20254 flights—
Oct–Dec 202525 flights—
Jan–Mar 2026113 flights67.0%
Apr–Jun 202641 flights87.8%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 71.3% on time across 183 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on STL to DTW logged 4 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 25 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 113 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 41 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 71.3% annual figure is the one to use.

Arrival by arrival

How late SkyWest on STL to DTW runs when it is late

When SkyWest on STL to DTW is late it tends to be very late: 27 of its 52 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 15 were two hours or more.

15+ min early44 flights24.3%
Within 15 min85 flights47.0%
15–29 min late10 flights5.5%
30–59 min late15 flights8.3%
1–2 hours late12 flights6.6%
2+ hours late15 flights8.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 181 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

9 of 61 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. No flight that left on time arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for SkyWest on STL to DTW

The latest arrival of the period was on 16 January 2026, 8 hours 24 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of SkyWest on STL to DTW in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
16 January 2026	8 hours 24 minutes	Carrier
24 January 2026	7 hours 16 minutes	Carrier
7 February 2026	6 hours 10 minutes	Carrier
23 March 2026	5 hours 47 minutes	Carrier
29 December 2025	5 hours 25 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 74% of the 5,715 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
74%
Extreme weather
22%
National Airspace System
4%

Extreme weather accounts for 22% 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 3.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,715 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 74%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,224 of the 5,715 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

14.9% 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.

At 440 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 61.2% on time across 183 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. 183 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 SkyWest on STL to DTW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 183 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 71.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 181 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures