Carrier route record
MQDTW→ORD
Envoy Air · Detroit to Chicago
- Flights
- 946
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five 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 946 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 453 at 81.8% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 81.8% on time across 453 flights.
Key figures
On time
79.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 913 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.49%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.2%
Every carrier on DTW to ORD, 6,014 flights
These figures cover 946 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Envoy against every carrier on DTW to ORD
Envoy flew 946 of the 6,014 flights on DTW to ORD, about 16% of it. Its 79.2% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.2%. 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 81.8% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 68.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,563 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 | 453 | 81.8% | 101 min | 5.08% | B− |
| Envoy Air (this page) | 946 | 79.2% | 89 min | 3.49% | B− |
| United Airlines | 827 | 73.5% | 76 min | 0.97% | C+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,156 | 69.9% | 81 min | 3.20% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,563 | 68.5% | 98 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 5.1% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 21 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am122 flights89.2%
- 8am–11am197 flights89.8%
- 11am–2pm312 flights74.0%
- 2pm–5pm36 flights69.4%
- 5pm–8pm180 flights76.3%
- 8pm–5am99 flights69.3%
Scale runs 60% to 95%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.8% of the time, against 69.3% for the overnight window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 312 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on DTW to ORD through the year
August is the worst month at 73.1% on time, 13 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 85.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 73.0%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Envoy on DTW to ORD runs when it is late
Envoy on DTW to ORD often beats the schedule: 408 of 913 completed flights, 45%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 190 late arrivals split 50 under half an hour, 53 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 87 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early408 flights44.7%
- Within 15 min315 flights34.5%
- 15–29 min late50 flights5.5%
- 30–59 min late53 flights5.8%
- 1–2 hours late53 flights5.8%
- 2+ hours late34 flights3.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 913 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
35 of 196 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 29 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Envoy on DTW to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 March 2026, 26 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 March 2026 | 26 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 July 2026 | 18 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 February 2026 | 9 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 October 2025 | 8 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 May 2026 | 4 hours 49 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why Envoy runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 16%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 16,810 reported delay minutes.
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 3.49%, against 1.89% 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
9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 78.2% on time across 946 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 946 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 3.49% 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. 913 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 ORD81.8%
- United Airlines on DTW to ORD73.5%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to ORD69.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to ORD68.5%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.