Carrier route record
OOORD→DTW
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Detroit
- Flights
- 2,563
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ORD to DTW carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,563 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
64.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,472 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.47%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.1%
Every carrier on ORD to DTW, 6,013 flights
These figures cover 2,563 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on ORD to DTW
SkyWest flew 2,563 of the 6,013 flights on ORD to DTW, about 43% of it. Its 64.6% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number six 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; United Airlines manages 70.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 827 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 | 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 (this page) | 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.
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Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am216 flights79.5%
- 8am–11am404 flights70.5%
- 11am–2pm304 flights74.2%
- 2pm–5pm605 flights64.4%
- 5pm–8pm820 flights57.1%
- 8pm–5am214 flights53.4%
Scale runs 45% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.4% on time, against 79.5% 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. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 820 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 50.0% on time, against 73.5% 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. December was the busiest month here, with 269 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 71.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 58.6%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on ORD to DTW runs when it is late
The 875 late arrivals split 202 under half an hour, 249 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 424 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early486 flights19.7%
- Within 15 min1,111 flights44.9%
- 15–29 min late202 flights8.2%
- 30–59 min late249 flights10.1%
- 1–2 hours late210 flights8.5%
- 2+ hours late214 flights8.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,472 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
102 of 819 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. In the other direction, 158 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DTW.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on ORD to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 9 December 2025, 16 hours 50 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 9 December 2025 | 16 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 February 2026 | 14 hours 17 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 January 2026 | 13 hours 18 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 16 April 2026 | 13 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 February 2026 | 12 hours 42 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 80,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 22%Extreme weather
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 22% 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 3.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 80,170 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 35,000 of the 80,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.47%, 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
17.2% 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 68.5% on time across 2,563 flights, 4 points above 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,563 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 SkyWest on ORD to DTW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.47% 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. 2,472 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DTW, every carrier
- SkyWest on DTW to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to DTW79.2%
- Envoy Air on ORD to DTW78.2%
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to DTW77.3%
- United Airlines on ORD to DTW70.0%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.