Route profile
DTW→BOS
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Detroit to Boston, 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 31% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 8,286 flights. How this is calculated
DTW → BOS arrives on time 76.7% of the time; the return trip, BOS → DTW, arrives on time 78.6% of the time.
DTW → BOS spends 26.9 minutes on the ground on a 632-mile trip: 17.4 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at DTW and 9.5 minutes from touchdown to gate at BOS.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why DTW → BOS flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
DTW → BOS cancelled 127 of 8,286 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 65. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 40.2% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 162 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 127 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.
51 cancellations, 40.2% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
44 cancellations, 34.6% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
32 cancellations, 25.2% 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. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
127 coded cancellations were recorded on DTW → BOS; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
57 min late
against a median of 7 min early
DTW → BOS has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 7 min early, but the worst tenth are 64 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 8,286 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at BOS after arriving from DTW.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 37% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 23% | High risk |
| 60 min | 16% | High risk |
| 90 min | 9.3% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 5.3% | 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 1.53% of the time and diverts 0.10% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 8,151 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 57 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 8,286 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
DTW → BOS flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 88.9% of the time, against 63.5% for 3–6 PM departures, a gap of 25.4 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 87.2% on time from 290 flights
- 7 AM: 89.8% on time from 1,332 flights
- 8 AM: 83.9% on time from 219 flights
- 9 AM: 80.8% on time from 136 flights
- 10 AM: 84.5% on time from 1,289 flights
- 11 AM: 84.6% on time from 275 flights
- 12 PM: 79.6% on time from 227 flights
- 1 PM: 76.3% on time from 361 flights
- 2 PM: 69.0% on time from 793 flights
- 3 PM: 69.9% on time from 272 flights
- 4 PM: 81.6% on time from 163 flights
- 5 PM: 57.5% on time from 797 flights
- 6 PM: 69.1% on time from 413 flights
- 7 PM: 70.5% on time from 211 flights
- 8 PM: 71.1% on time from 387 flights
- 9 PM: 69.8% on time from 912 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why DTW → BOS runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
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 DTW → BOS. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
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 | 5,258 | 77.5% | 1.16% | -6 min | 8.6% |
| JetBlue | 2,437 | 74.6% | 2.17% | -8 min | 11.6% |
| Spirit Airlines | 520 | 78.5% | 2.31% | -9 min | 9.3% |
Delta Air Lines flew 64.0% of the 8,215 flights listed. Spirit Airlines cancelled 2.31% of its flights here against 1.16% for Delta Air Lines.
Spirit Airlines arrived on time 3.9 percentage points more often than JetBlue on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
DL1163 (7:00 AM) arrived on time 90.8% of the time, 30.8 points more often than DL1707 (5:59 PM) at 60.0%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 10.4 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 74.1%
- Feb: 82.0%
- Mar: 81.8%
- Apr: 79.6%
- May: 76.3%
- Jun: 74.5%
- Jul: 66.7%
- Aug: 73.0%
- Sep: 79.0%
- Oct: 80.0%
- Nov: 80.9%
- Dec: 77.8%
July is historically the weakest month and February the strongest, a spread of 15.3 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 65.3% from 225 flights
- August 2023: 70.6% from 240 flights
- September 2023: 79.9% from 228 flights
- October 2023: 86.1% from 238 flights
- November 2023: 85.4% from 219 flights
- December 2023: 91.7% from 194 flights
- January 2024: 67.5% from 204 flights
- February 2024: 86.0% from 195 flights
- March 2024: 78.7% from 212 flights
- April 2024: 81.5% from 206 flights
- May 2024: 78.0% from 243 flights
- June 2024: 77.9% from 240 flights
- July 2024: 72.8% from 245 flights
- August 2024: 70.6% from 242 flights
- September 2024: 84.2% from 249 flights
- October 2024: 83.2% from 250 flights
- November 2024: 81.0% from 226 flights
- December 2024: 71.3% from 235 flights
- January 2025: 84.2% from 203 flights
- February 2025: 78.8% from 184 flights
- March 2025: 85.7% from 239 flights
- April 2025: 82.3% from 239 flights
- May 2025: 71.2% from 250 flights
- June 2025: 68.6% from 250 flights
- July 2025: 67.4% from 250 flights
- August 2025: 77.4% from 250 flights
- September 2025: 72.8% from 244 flights
- October 2025: 71.7% from 279 flights
- November 2025: 76.3% from 227 flights
- December 2025: 71.7% from 199 flights
- January 2026: 69.3% from 166 flights
- February 2026: 80.7% from 156 flights
- March 2026: 80.3% from 180 flights
- April 2026: 74.4% from 200 flights
- May 2026: 80.5% from 216 flights
- June 2026: 77.3% from 221 flights
- July 2026: 61.2% from 242 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 74.2% against 77.2% in the 12 months before — declining by 3.0 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 8,286 DTW → BOS 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