Carrier route record
MQORD→DTW
Envoy Air · Chicago to Detroit
- Flights
- 860
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy 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 roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 860 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
76.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 833 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.6%
Every carrier on ORD to DTW, 5,956 flights
These figures cover 860 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Envoy against every carrier on ORD to DTW
Envoy flew 860 of the 5,956 flights on ORD to DTW, about 14% of it. Its 76.5% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three 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 | 1,258 | 76.7% | 88 min | 2.54% | B |
| Envoy Air (this page) | 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
When Envoy runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 42 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am138 flights91.3%
- 8am–11am299 flights76.4%
- 11am–2pm32 flights71.9%
- 2pm–5pm205 flights73.2%
- 5pm–8pm73 flights49.3%
- 8pm–5am113 flights82.1%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.3% on time, against 91.3% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 299 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Envoy on ORD to DTW through the year
July is the worst month at 64.1% on time, 23 points below November, the best at 87.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 133 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.2%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Envoy runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 10,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,270 reported delay minutes.
50% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.
Cancellations run at 3.14%, against 1.81% 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
7.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 76.8% on time across 860 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 860 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 Envoy on ORD to DTW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.14% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you roughly 50 minutes; 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. 833 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DTW, every carrier
- Envoy on DTW to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to DTW77.3%
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to DTW76.7%
- United Airlines on ORD to DTW70.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to DTW64.0%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.