Route reliability record

DTW→ORD

Detroit to Chicago

Flights: 5,959
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 235 mi
Carriers: 8

This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 5,959 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 525 at 82.2% on time.

Republic Airways is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 82.2% on time across 525 flights.

On time

72.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,773 completed flights

Avg delay

90 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.02%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Republic

82.2% on time across 525 flights

These figures cover 5,959 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

Which airline is most reliable on DTW to ORD

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 82.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 69.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,432 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DTW to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlinesthin sample	47	90.2%	142 min	12.77%	A−
Republic Airways	525	82.2%	102 min	4.57%	B−
Envoy Air	860	76.8%	83 min	3.60%	B−
Delta Air Lines	1,258	70.9%	82 min	2.54%	C
United Airlines	815	70.2%	71 min	1.35%	C
SkyWest Airlines	2,432	69.0%	97 min	3.12%	C−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	20	60.0%	103 min	0.00%	D+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	2	0.0%	1287 min	0.00%	F+

Republic Airways cancels 4.6% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

Departure window

The best time of day to leave

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am1,361 flights80.5%
8am–11am1,240 flights79.3%
11am–2pm986 flights73.7%
2pm–5pm876 flights71.2%
5pm–8pm1,033 flights53.8%
8pm–5am463 flights64.0%

Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.8% on time, against 80.5% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 1,361 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 26 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 55.0% on time, against 80.8% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. May was the busiest month here, with 600 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 75.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.0%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why this route gets delayed

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 146,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
42%
National Airspace System
28%
Late-arriving aircraft
23%
Extreme weather
8%
Security
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 61,000 of the 146,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 145,774 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 3.02%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 235 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 70.6% on time across 5,956 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 5,959 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking this route

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.02% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 5,773 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

DTW to ORD questions

How often is DTW to ORD delayed?

Roughly one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.0% of the 5,959 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.

Which airline is most reliable on DTW to ORD?

Republic Airways leads at 82.2% on time across 525 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 69.0%, a gap of 13 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.

What time of day has the fewest delays on DTW to ORD?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 80.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 53.8%, 27 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.

How bad are December delays on DTW to ORD?

December is the weakest month at 55.0% on time, compared with 80.8% in September. Across the year that is 26 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. DTW to ORD and ORD to DTW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures