Carrier route record
MQDTW→ORD
Envoy Air · Detroit to Chicago
- Flights
- 860
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on DTW to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 860 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
76.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 829 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.0%
Every carrier on DTW to ORD, 5,959 flights
These figures cover 860 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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
Envoy against every carrier on DTW to ORD
Envoy flew 860 of the 5,959 flights on DTW to ORD, about 14% of it. Its 76.8% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three 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 (this page) | 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
When Envoy runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 34 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am123 flights89.3%
- 8am–11am140 flights90.6%
- 11am–2pm299 flights73.9%
- 2pm–5pm32 flights71.9%
- 5pm–8pm193 flights70.9%
- 8pm–5am73 flights56.2%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.2% on time, against 90.6% for the 8am–11am 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 299 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on DTW to ORD through the year
July is the worst month at 55.3% on time, 31 points below May, the best at 86.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 133 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.1%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Envoy runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 16,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,852 reported delay minutes.
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit.
Cancellations run at 3.60%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.4% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 76.5% on time across 860 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 860 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 Envoy on DTW to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.60% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 829 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to ORD, every carrier
- Envoy on ORD to DTW, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DTW to ORD82.2%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to ORD70.9%
- United Airlines on DTW to ORD70.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to ORD69.0%
- Envoy Air 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.