Route profile
CLT→DTW
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Charlotte to Detroit, 500 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 57% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 11,180 flights. How this is calculated
CLT → DTW arrives on time 80.7% of the time; the return trip, DTW → CLT, arrives on time 84.0% of the time, a 3.3-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
CLT → DTW spends 27.1 minutes on the ground on a 500-mile trip: 18.1 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at CLT and 9.0 minutes from touchdown to gate at DTW.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why CLT → DTW flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
CLT → DTW cancelled 125 of 11,180 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 89. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 73.6% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 122 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 125 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.
92 cancellations, 73.6% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
29 cancellations, 23.2% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
4 cancellations, 3.2% 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. With only one or two carriers on the route, the split mostly reflects how they file. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
125 coded cancellations were recorded on CLT → DTW; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
43 min late
against a median of 7 min early
Percentiles over 11,180 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at DTW after arriving from CLT.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 33% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 19% | High risk |
| 60 min | 13% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 7.2% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 4.2% | Low 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 1.12% of the time and diverts 0.13% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 11,041 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 43 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 11,180 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
CLT → DTW flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 92.7% of the time, against 66.5% for 9 PM–5 AM departures, a gap of 26.2 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 95.5% on time from 1,091 flights
- 7 AM: 88.8% on time from 786 flights
- 8 AM: 92.5% on time from 218 flights
- 9 AM: 89.1% on time from 1,415 flights
- 10 AM: 94.7% on time from 139 flights
- 11 AM: 81.6% on time from 436 flights
- 12 PM: 85.9% on time from 664 flights
- 1 PM: 83.9% on time from 1,252 flights
- 2 PM: 77.9% on time from 407 flights
- 3 PM: 74.7% on time from 241 flights
- 4 PM: 74.5% on time from 494 flights
- 5 PM: 71.5% on time from 1,476 flights
- 6 PM: 77.4% on time from 410 flights
- 7 PM: too few flights to score
- 8 PM: 69.2% on time from 965 flights
- 9 PM: 65.9% on time from 239 flights
- 10 PM: 66.7% on time from 857 flights
- 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why CLT → 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 CLT → DTW. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on CLT → DTW, at 49.3%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 92.7% of the time and 9 PM–5 AM departures 66.5%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is the one the flight leaves from, where a cancellation keeps it from departing at all. Bad weather cancels 4.6 times the normal rate at CLT against 2.3 times at DTW. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: CLT 5.7% against 1.2%, DTW 2.5% against 1.1%. Flights that did leave DTW in bad weather arrived on time 66.5% of the time, against 81.6% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | CLT | DTW |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 5.7% | 2.5% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.2% | 1.1% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 63.5% | 66.5% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 75.9% | 81.6% |
| Departures in bad weather | 55,311 | 53,809 |
Delta Air Lines (2.9% cancelled against 5.9% for the other carriers at CLT) and American Airlines (5.3% cancelled against 6.4% for the other carriers at CLT) cancelled fewer departures from CLT in bad weather than the other carriers there did in the same months. None of the route’s other carriers was clearly worse.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at CLT
All departures from CLT| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,843 | 2.9%below the others | 5.9% |
| American Airlines | 33,044 | 5.3%below the others | 6.4% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from CLT and DTW, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from CLT on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: CLT (airlines), DTW, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 6,212 | 75.7% | 1.38% | -4 min | 8.7% |
| Delta Air Lines | 4,577 | 87.5% | 0.76% | -11 min | 5.1% |
American Airlines flew 57.6% of the 10,789 flights listed.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 11.8 percentage points more often than American Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Wednesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 8.3 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 81.8%
- Feb: 87.0%
- Mar: 81.6%
- Apr: 83.4%
- May: 80.4%
- Jun: 74.1%
- Jul: 71.5%
- Aug: 75.3%
- Sep: 85.4%
- Oct: 86.3%
- Nov: 85.0%
- Dec: 80.4%
July is historically the weakest month and February the strongest, a spread of 15.5 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 77.8% from 262 flights
- August 2023: 77.2% from 272 flights
- September 2023: 81.6% from 261 flights
- October 2023: 85.1% from 290 flights
- November 2023: 87.6% from 250 flights
- December 2023: 85.6% from 222 flights
- January 2024: 80.2% from 208 flights
- February 2024: 87.9% from 257 flights
- March 2024: 80.7% from 354 flights
- April 2024: 79.8% from 347 flights
- May 2024: 73.9% from 363 flights
- June 2024: 74.2% from 350 flights
- July 2024: 66.2% from 357 flights
- August 2024: 70.4% from 355 flights
- September 2024: 85.2% from 326 flights
- October 2024: 88.8% from 347 flights
- November 2024: 85.0% from 307 flights
- December 2024: 81.3% from 320 flights
- January 2025: 80.4% from 291 flights
- February 2025: 86.9% from 295 flights
- March 2025: 82.6% from 354 flights
- April 2025: 83.2% from 324 flights
- May 2025: 80.7% from 332 flights
- June 2025: 73.8% from 314 flights
- July 2025: 73.4% from 313 flights
- August 2025: 79.2% from 313 flights
- September 2025: 89.0% from 283 flights
- October 2025: 84.7% from 321 flights
- November 2025: 82.9% from 305 flights
- December 2025: 75.3% from 290 flights
- January 2026: 84.5% from 294 flights
- February 2026: 86.2% from 262 flights
- March 2026: 81.7% from 296 flights
- April 2026: 88.0% from 293 flights
- May 2026: 88.1% from 296 flights
- June 2026: 74.2% from 269 flights
- July 2026: 70.2% from 287 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 82.0% against 80.9% in the 12 months before — broadly unchanged.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 11,180 CLT → 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