Route reliability record

ORD→DTW

Chicago to Detroit

Flights: 5,961
Period: June 2025 to May 2026
Distance: 235 mi
Carriers: 7

This route 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 77.4%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 5,961 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,313 at 77.5% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 77.5% on time across 1,313 flights.

On time

70.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,798 completed flights

Avg delay

83 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.70%

National rate is 1.80%

Best carrier

Delta

77.5% on time across 1,313 flights

These figures cover 5,961 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% 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

Which airline is most reliable on ORD to DTW

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 77.5% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 63.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,382 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	1,313	77.5%	86 min	1.98%	B
Republic Airways	645	75.8%	76 min	3.41%	B−
Envoy Air	787	75.2%	53 min	2.80%	B
United Airlines	767	71.3%	74 min	1.43%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	47	70.7%	135 min	12.77%	C−
SkyWest Airlines	2,382	63.9%	92 min	3.11%	D−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	20	60.0%	68 min	0.00%	D+

Republic Airways cancels 3.4% 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

The best time of day to leave

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 28 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am896 flights86.5%
8am–11am972 flights75.6%
11am–2pm695 flights78.1%
2pm–5pm1,065 flights68.0%
5pm–8pm1,503 flights58.7%
8pm–5am830 flights66.4%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.7% on time, against 86.5% 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.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 26 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 53.8% on time, against 79.4% in September. 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.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 75.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 66.4%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why this route gets delayed

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 142,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
14%

Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure.

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 54,000 of the 142,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 2.70%, against 1.80% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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 actually costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% 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 runs 71.5% on time across 5,961 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.

The sample behind these figures is 5,961 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking this route

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 79.4% on time and December 53.8%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else.

Common questions

ORD to DTW questions

How often is ORD to DTW delayed?

Roughly one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.3% of the 5,961 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.

Which airline is most reliable on ORD to DTW?

Delta Air Lines leads at 77.5% on time across 1,313 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 63.9%, a gap of 14 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.

What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to DTW?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.7%, 28 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.

How bad are December delays on ORD to DTW?

December is the weakest month at 53.8% on time, compared with 79.4% in September. Across the year that is 26 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. ORD to DTW and DTW to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures