Carrier route record
YXORD→DTW
Republic Airways · Chicago to Detroit
- Flights
- 524
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on ORD to DTW lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 524 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,258 at 76.7% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Republic on ORD to DTW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 502 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.6%
Every carrier on ORD to DTW, 5,956 flights
These figures cover 524 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
Republic against every carrier on ORD to DTW
Republic flew 524 of the 5,956 flights on ORD to DTW, about 9% of it. Its 77.3% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 76.7% 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 (this page) | 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 | 2,433 | 64.0% | 91 min | 3.41% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 60.0% | 68 min | 0.00% | D+ |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.4% 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 Republic runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am24 flights—
- 8am–11am13 flights—
- 11am–2pm125 flights89.5%
- 2pm–5pm87 flights72.9%
- 5pm–8pm25 flights—
- 8pm–5am250 flights72.5%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 89.5% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 72.5%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 250 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on ORD to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 52.6% on time, against 93.8% in October. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 110 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 84.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 72.3%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 8,880 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
46% 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 8,880 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 8,880 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.20%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.2% on time across 525 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 524 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 Republic on ORD to DTW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.20% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 502 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DTW, every carrier
- Republic on DTW to ORD, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to DTW76.7%
- Envoy Air on ORD to DTW76.5%
- United Airlines on ORD to DTW70.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to DTW64.0%
- Republic Airways 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.