Carrier route record
DLORD→DTW
Delta Air Lines · Chicago to Detroit
- Flights
- 1,258
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on ORD to DTW lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,258 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 524 at 77.3% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 77.3% on time across 524 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,226 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.6%
Every carrier on ORD to DTW, 5,956 flights
These figures cover 1,258 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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
Delta against every carrier on ORD to DTW
Delta flew 1,258 of the 5,956 flights on ORD to DTW, about 21% of it. Its 76.7% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.3% 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 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 (this page) | 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.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on ORD to DTW
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 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am349 flights85.8%
- 8am–11am231 flights79.0%
- 11am–2pm159 flights77.4%
- 2pm–5pm126 flights76.0%
- 5pm–8pm393 flights66.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.8% of the time, against 66.8% 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 393 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. August was the busiest month here, with 159 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.6%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 25,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
53% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 25,080 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.54%, against 1.81% 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.8% 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 70.9% on time across 1,258 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,258 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 87.8% on time and December 62.2%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,226 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 DTW77.3%
- Envoy Air on ORD to DTW76.5%
- United Airlines on ORD to DTW70.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to DTW64.0%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.