Carrier route record
UADTW→ORD
United Airlines · Detroit to Chicago
- Flights
- 827
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DTW to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 827 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
73.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 819 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.97%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.2%
Every carrier on DTW to ORD, 6,014 flights
These figures cover 827 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DTW to ORD
United flew 827 of the 6,014 flights on DTW to ORD, about 14% of it. Its 73.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.2%. 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 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 | 946 | 79.2% | 89 min | 3.49% | B− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 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.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DTW to ORD
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Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 42 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am163 flights78.4%
- 8am–11am253 flights74.7%
- 11am–2pm156 flights86.5%
- 2pm–5pm144 flights73.9%
- 5pm–8pm111 flights44.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 44.5% on time, against 86.5% for the 11am–2pm 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 253 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DTW to ORD through the year
January is the weak month at 50.0% on time, against 86.6% in April. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 110 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.4%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DTW to ORD runs when it is late
The 217 late arrivals split 74 under half an hour, 78 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 65 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early132 flights16.1%
- Within 15 min470 flights57.4%
- 15–29 min late74 flights9.0%
- 30–59 min late78 flights9.5%
- 1–2 hours late24 flights2.9%
- 2+ hours late41 flights5.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 819 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
25 of 144 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. In the other direction, 98 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DTW to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 January 2026, 10 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 January 2026 | 10 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 July 2026 | 9 hours 11 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 22 May 2026 | 7 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 November 2025 | 6 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 November 2025 | 6 hours 26 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 51% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%National Airspace System
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% 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 8,376 minutes out of 17,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 16,553 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 0.97% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.0% on time across 827 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 827 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 United on DTW to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 827 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 73.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 819 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to DTW, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DTW to ORD81.8%
- Envoy Air on DTW to ORD79.2%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to ORD69.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to ORD68.5%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.