Carrier route record
DLDTW→ORD
Delta Air Lines · Detroit to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,258
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on DTW to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,258 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 525 at 82.2% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 82.2% on time across 525 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,223 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.0%
Every carrier on DTW to ORD, 5,959 flights
These figures cover 1,258 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% 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
Delta against every carrier on DTW to ORD
Delta flew 1,258 of the 5,959 flights on DTW to ORD, about 21% of it. Its 70.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 90.2% to Spirit at 0.0%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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.
| 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 (this page) | 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.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on DTW to ORD
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am106 flights81.9%
- 8am–11am232 flights79.9%
- 11am–2pm178 flights73.0%
- 2pm–5pm265 flights71.1%
- 5pm–8pm190 flights62.0%
- 8pm–5am287 flights63.4%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.0% on time, against 81.9% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 287 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on DTW to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 58.1% on time, against 83.5% in February. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 159 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 76.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 67.2%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
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 29,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 33%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
40% 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 12,000 minutes out of 29,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 29,147 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.54%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.8% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.7% on time across 1,258 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,258 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 Delta on DTW to ORD
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 83.5% on time and December 58.1%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,223 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to ORD, every carrier
- Delta on ORD to DTW, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DTW to ORD82.2%
- Envoy Air on DTW to ORD76.8%
- United Airlines on DTW to ORD70.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to ORD69.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.