Carrier route record
UAORD→DTW
United Airlines · Chicago to Detroit
- Flights
- 814
- 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 United Airlines.
United on ORD to DTW sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 814 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
70.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 803 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.6%
Every carrier on ORD to DTW, 5,956 flights
These figures cover 814 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% 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
United against every carrier on ORD to DTW
United flew 814 of the 5,956 flights on ORD to DTW, about 14% of it. Its 70.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five 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 | 860 | 76.5% | 52 min | 3.14% | B− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 47 | 70.7% | 135 min | 12.77% | C− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 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 United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 31 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am108 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am83 flights79.3%
- 11am–2pm100 flights78.4%
- 2pm–5pm145 flights66.2%
- 5pm–8pm196 flights61.7%
- 8pm–5am182 flights61.3%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.3% on time, against 92.6% 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 196 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to DTW through the year
July is the worst month at 52.2% on time, 28 points below September, the best at 79.8%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 109 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.6%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 18,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
56% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 18,260 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 92.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.35% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 11.8% 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 runs 70.2% on time across 815 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. 814 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 United on ORD to DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 814 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 70.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 803 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DTW, every carrier
- United 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%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to DTW64.0%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- 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.