Carrier route record
UADTW→ORD
United Airlines · Detroit to Chicago
- Flights
- 815
- 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 United Airlines.
United 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 815 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
70.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 803 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.0%
Every carrier on DTW to ORD, 5,959 flights
These figures cover 815 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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
United against every carrier on DTW to ORD
United flew 815 of the 5,959 flights on DTW to ORD, about 14% of it. Its 70.2% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five 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 | 1,258 | 70.9% | 82 min | 2.54% | C |
| United Airlines (this page) | 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
United flight numbers on DTW to ORD
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 53 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am204 flights78.2%
- 8am–11am197 flights73.3%
- 11am–2pm88 flights89.8%
- 2pm–5pm182 flights74.2%
- 5pm–8pm144 flights37.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 30% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 37.1% on time, against 89.8% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 204 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 75.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.6%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 52% of the 17,000 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.
- 52%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% 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 8,900 minutes out of 17,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 17,005 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.35% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 runs 70.4% on time across 814 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. 815 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. 815 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 70.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 803 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 ORD82.2%
- Envoy Air on DTW to ORD76.8%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to ORD70.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to ORD69.0%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.