Route profile
BOS→DTW
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Boston to Detroit, 632 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 39% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 8,284 flights. How this is calculated
BOS → DTW arrives on time 78.6% of the time; the return trip, DTW → BOS, arrives on time 76.7% of the time.
BOS → DTW spends 29.0 minutes on the ground on a 632-mile trip: 19.8 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at BOS and 9.2 minutes from touchdown to gate at DTW.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
On-time performance swings unusually widely by time of day here, wider than 93% of 4,023 comparable routes.
92.2% on time for 5–9 AM departures, against 60.1% for 9 PM–5 AM.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Ranked against every other route with the same kind of figure and at least 4,023 in the comparison.
Why BOS → DTW flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
BOS → DTW cancelled 122 of 8,284 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 68. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 39.3% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 173 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 122 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
48 cancellations, 39.3% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
45 cancellations, 36.9% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
29 cancellations, 23.8% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
122 coded cancellations were recorded on BOS → DTW; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
53 min late
against a median of 8 min early
BOS → DTW has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 8 min early, but the worst tenth are 61 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 8,284 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at DTW after arriving from BOS.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 34% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 21% | High risk |
| 60 min | 15% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 9.0% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 5.5% | Some risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 1.47% of the time and diverts 0.14% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 8,150 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 53 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 8,284 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
BOS → DTW flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 92.2% of the time, against 60.1% for 9 PM–5 AM departures, a gap of 32.1 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 94.7% on time from 1,159 flights
- 6 AM: 91.8% on time from 262 flights
- 7 AM: 86.0% on time from 173 flights
- 8 AM: 86.9% on time from 318 flights
- 9 AM: 88.0% on time from 1,316 flights
- 10 AM: too few flights to score
- 11 AM: 76.0% on time from 153 flights
- 12 PM: 82.3% on time from 418 flights
- 1 PM: 81.7% on time from 870 flights
- 2 PM: 72.9% on time from 281 flights
- 3 PM: 68.9% on time from 186 flights
- 4 PM: 66.1% on time from 655 flights
- 5 PM: 69.0% on time from 925 flights
- 6 PM: 65.6% on time from 132 flights
- 7 PM: 72.4% on time from 444 flights
- 8 PM: 59.8% on time from 612 flights
- 9 PM: 59.4% on time from 257 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why BOS → DTW runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for BOS → DTW. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on BOS → DTW, at 43.2%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 92.2% of the time and 9 PM–5 AM departures 60.1%.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 5,260 | 81.2% | 1.24% | -9 min | 7.6% |
| JetBlue | 2,437 | 73.8% | 1.89% | -6 min | 11.6% |
| Spirit Airlines | 517 | 73.7% | 2.13% | -5 min | 13.0% |
Delta Air Lines flew 64.0% of the 8,214 flights listed.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 7.5 percentage points more often than Spirit Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
DL1019 (5:20 AM) arrived on time 95.1% of the time, 27.4 points more often than B61237 (4:36 PM) at 67.7%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Wednesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 8.2 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 79.9%
- Feb: 84.9%
- Mar: 85.0%
- Apr: 82.0%
- May: 78.0%
- Jun: 70.8%
- Jul: 65.6%
- Aug: 78.2%
- Sep: 82.9%
- Oct: 83.1%
- Nov: 84.4%
- Dec: 74.4%
July is historically the weakest month and March the strongest, a spread of 19.4 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 61.9% from 225 flights
- August 2023: 76.9% from 240 flights
- September 2023: 81.9% from 229 flights
- October 2023: 89.1% from 239 flights
- November 2023: 87.2% from 218 flights
- December 2023: 84.4% from 193 flights
- January 2024: 76.8% from 203 flights
- February 2024: 90.2% from 195 flights
- March 2024: 86.8% from 212 flights
- April 2024: 82.0% from 206 flights
- May 2024: 81.4% from 243 flights
- June 2024: 71.0% from 239 flights
- July 2024: 70.1% from 244 flights
- August 2024: 74.8% from 240 flights
- September 2024: 81.5% from 250 flights
- October 2024: 82.3% from 249 flights
- November 2024: 87.6% from 225 flights
- December 2024: 71.7% from 235 flights
- January 2025: 86.6% from 202 flights
- February 2025: 80.3% from 184 flights
- March 2025: 84.5% from 240 flights
- April 2025: 83.1% from 239 flights
- May 2025: 75.6% from 250 flights
- June 2025: 70.3% from 251 flights
- July 2025: 67.1% from 250 flights
- August 2025: 82.7% from 250 flights
- September 2025: 85.2% from 245 flights
- October 2025: 78.5% from 278 flights
- November 2025: 78.7% from 228 flights
- December 2025: 67.9% from 198 flights
- January 2026: 75.3% from 167 flights
- February 2026: 83.8% from 155 flights
- March 2026: 83.7% from 181 flights
- April 2026: 80.7% from 203 flights
- May 2026: 77.1% from 215 flights
- June 2026: 71.2% from 221 flights
- July 2026: 62.8% from 242 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 77.2% against 78.5% in the 12 months before — broadly unchanged.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 8,284 BOS → DTW flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed