Carrier route record

OODTW→MDW

SkyWest Airlines · Detroit to Chicago

Flights: 265
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 20%
Carriers: 2

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

SkyWest on DTW to MDW lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 265 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on DTW to MDW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

77.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 264 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.38%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.2%

Every carrier on DTW to MDW, 1,320 flights

These figures cover 265 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on DTW to MDW

SkyWest flew 265 of the 1,320 flights on DTW to MDW, about 20% of it. Its 77.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 77.7% to Southwest at 75.8%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on DTW to MDW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	265	77.7%	64 min	0.38%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,055	75.8%	55 min	1.52%	B

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 265 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am127 flights77.2%
11am–2pm9 flights—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm129 flights79.7%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 79.7% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.

Across the year

SkyWest on DTW to MDW through the year

Jul–Sep 2025189 flights75.0%
Oct–Dec 202576 flights84.2%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. 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 77.7% on time across 265 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on DTW to MDW logged 189 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 77.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 67.6%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 67% of the 3,787 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
67%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
14%

Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,787 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 67%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,554 of the 3,787 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, 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 85.2% on time across 265 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 265 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. 265 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 77.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 264 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures