Route reliability record
ORD→DTW
Chicago to Detroit
- Flights
- 5,956
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 5,956 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 524 at 77.3% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 77.3% on time across 524 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,773 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.04%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
77.3% on time across 524 flights
These figures cover 5,956 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.2% 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. Republic Airways arrives on time 77.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,433 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 524 | 77.3% | 78 min | 4.20% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,258 | 76.7% | 88 min | 2.54% | B |
| Envoy Air | 860 | 76.5% | 52 min | 3.14% | B− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 47 | 70.7% | 135 min | 12.77% | C− |
| United Airlines | 814 | 70.4% | 77 min | 1.35% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,433 | 64.0% | 91 min | 3.41% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 60.0% | 68 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Republic Airways cancels 4.2% 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 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am909 flights86.6%
- 8am–11am973 flights74.8%
- 11am–2pm668 flights77.8%
- 2pm–5pm1,096 flights67.5%
- 5pm–8pm1,507 flights59.0%
- 8pm–5am803 flights66.5%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.0% on time, against 86.6% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 1,507 flights scheduled in it.
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.
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. May was the busiest month here, with 599 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 75.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 66.0%. 10 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.
- 36%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
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 split is drawn from 141,843 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 52,000 of the 142,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.04%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.2% 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 runs 72.0% on time across 5,959 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 5,956 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 delay figures matter less here than the 3.04% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 5,773 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
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 29.4% of the 5,956 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to DTW?
Republic Airways leads at 77.3% on time across 524 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 64.0%, a gap of 13 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 86.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.0%, 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.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on-time record77.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record76.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.