Carrier route record
YXDTW→ORD
Republic Airways · Detroit to Chicago
- Flights
- 525
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on DTW to ORD lands a B−, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 525 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 860 at 76.8% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Republic's DTW to ORD record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 500 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.57%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.0%
Every carrier on DTW to ORD, 5,959 flights
These figures cover 525 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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
Republic against every carrier on DTW to ORD
Republic flew 525 of the 5,959 flights on DTW to ORD, about 9% of it. Its 82.2% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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. Envoy Air arrives on time 76.8% 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 (this page) | 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 | 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+ |
Envoy Air cancels 3.6% 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 Republic runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 25 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am195 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am77 flights82.7%
- 11am–2pm4 flights—
- 2pm–5pm134 flights78.5%
- 5pm–8pm33 flights64.5%
- 8pm–5am82 flights76.1%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.5% on time, against 89.4% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 195 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on DTW to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 56.8% on time, against 90.0% in October. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 110 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 75.0%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 9,030 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.
- 45%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
34% 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 9,030 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 34 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. The split is drawn from 9,030 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 4,048 of the 9,030 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.57%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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. 9.0% 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 77.3% on time across 524 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 525 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 Republic on DTW to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.57% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 500 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to ORD, every carrier
- Republic on ORD to DTW, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DTW to ORD76.8%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to ORD70.9%
- United Airlines on DTW to ORD70.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on DTW to ORD69.0%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.