Carrier route record
OOORD→DTW
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Detroit
- Flights
- 2,433
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 2,433 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
64.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,348 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.6%
Every carrier on ORD to DTW, 5,956 flights
These figures cover 2,433 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.4% 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
SkyWest against every carrier on ORD to DTW
SkyWest flew 2,433 of the 5,956 flights on ORD to DTW, about 41% of it. Its 64.0% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number six 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; United Airlines manages 70.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 814 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 (this page) | 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 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 27 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am290 flights82.4%
- 8am–11am330 flights69.6%
- 11am–2pm252 flights72.8%
- 2pm–5pm532 flights62.5%
- 5pm–8pm820 flights55.4%
- 8pm–5am209 flights55.4%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.4% on time, against 82.4% 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 70.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 57.9%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 77,000 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 20%Extreme weather
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 77,188 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 34,000 of the 77,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.41%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 17.4% 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 69.0% on time across 2,432 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,433 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 3.41% 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. 2,348 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 DTW77.3%
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to DTW76.7%
- Envoy Air on ORD to DTW76.5%
- United Airlines on ORD to DTW70.4%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.