Carrier route record
DLORD→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Chicago to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,156
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on ORD to DTW lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 1,156 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 454 at 79.2% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 79.2% on time across 454 flights.
Key figures
On time
77.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,119 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.20%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.1%
Every carrier on ORD to DTW, 6,013 flights
These figures cover 1,156 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on ORD to DTW
Delta flew 1,156 of the 6,013 flights on ORD to DTW, about 19% of it. Its 77.3% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 79.2% to PSA at 60.0%. Two 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 79.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.6%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 454 | 79.2% | 77 min | 4.63% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 946 | 78.2% | 52 min | 3.38% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,156 | 77.3% | 96 min | 3.20% | B− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 47 | 70.7% | 135 min | 12.77% | C− |
| United Airlines | 827 | 70.0% | 80 min | 0.97% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,563 | 64.6% | 92 min | 3.47% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 60.0% | 68 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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
Delta flight numbers on ORD to DTW
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 19 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am349 flights87.3%
- 8am–11am183 flights78.5%
- 11am–2pm101 flights77.2%
- 2pm–5pm114 flights76.8%
- 5pm–8pm409 flights68.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.3% of the time, against 68.2% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 409 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on ORD to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 62.2% on time, against 87.8% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 138 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.9%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on ORD to DTW runs when it is late
Delta on ORD to DTW often beats the schedule: 404 of 1,119 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 254 late arrivals split 65 under half an hour, 63 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 126 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early404 flights36.1%
- Within 15 min461 flights41.2%
- 15–29 min late65 flights5.8%
- 30–59 min late63 flights5.6%
- 1–2 hours late68 flights6.1%
- 2+ hours late58 flights5.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,119 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
32 of 250 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. 36 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on ORD to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 March 2026, 17 hours 41 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 March 2026 | 17 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 August 2026 | 15 hours 1 minute | Carrier |
| 15 March 2026 | 9 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 September 2025 | 8 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 December 2025 | 8 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 24,396 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,129 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.20%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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 costs
11.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 69.9% on time across 1,156 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,156 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 Delta on ORD to DTW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.20% 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. 1,119 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DTW, every carrier
- Delta on DTW to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to DTW79.2%
- Envoy Air on ORD to DTW78.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to DTW70.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to DTW64.6%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.