Carrier route record
OODTW→MDW
SkyWest Airlines · Detroit to Chicago
- Flights
- 137
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on DTW to MDW earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 137 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DTW to MDW record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 137 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.9%
Every carrier on DTW to MDW, 1,184 flights
These figures cover 137 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on DTW to MDW
SkyWest flew 137 of the 1,184 flights on DTW to MDW, about 12% of it. Its 84.7% on time is 11 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 84.7% to Southwest at 72.4%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 137 | 84.7% | 49 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,047 | 72.4% | 51 min | 1.24% | C |
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Departure window
When SkyWest 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 137 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am69 flights82.6%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm67 flights86.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 86.6% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.
Across the year
SkyWest on DTW to MDW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202561 flights85.2%
- Oct–Dec 202576 flights84.2%
Scale runs 75% to 90%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 84.7% on time across 137 flights.
Split by quarter, SkyWest on DTW to MDW logged 61 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 76 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 84.7% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on DTW to MDW runs when it is late
The 21 late arrivals split 9 under half an hour, 5 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 7 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early10 flights7.3%
- Within 15 min106 flights77.4%
- 15–29 min late9 flights6.6%
- 30–59 min late5 flights3.6%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights3.6%
- 2+ hours late2 flights1.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 137 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 13 of 137 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on DTW to MDW
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 September 2025, 2 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. Three of the five worst days fell in September 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 September 2025 | 2 hours 10 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 30 October 2025 | 2 hours 6 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 21 October 2025 | 1 hour 38 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 10 September 2025 | 1 hour 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 September 2025 | 1 hour 15 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 58% of the 1,030 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Carrier
- 33%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 339 minutes out of 1,030, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,030 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 601 of the 1,030 delay minutes reported here.
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
5.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 228 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 91.2% on time across 137 flights, 7 points above 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 137 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 DTW to MDW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 137 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 84.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 137 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to MDW, every carrier
- SkyWest on MDW to DTW, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on DTW to MDW72.4%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.