DTW to ORD flight delays
Detroit, MI (DTW) Chicago, IL (ORD) · 235 miles
524 flights · March 2025 – August 2026 · US Bureau of Transportation Statistics
79.16%
Arrived on time
Within 15 minutes of schedule
4.77%
Cancelled
Share of scheduled flights
85 min
When late, late by
Average across delayed arrivals
19 min
Delay per flight
Averaged over every flight flown
What the record says about this route
Which airline you fly changes the odds here. Envoy Air arrived on time 20.6 points more often than Delta Air Lines over the same period on the same route — same airports, same weather, same air traffic control. A gap that survives all of that is about how the two airlines are run.
Cancellation, not delay, is the risk worth pricing here: 4.77% of scheduled flights never operated. A late flight still gets you there. A cancelled one leaves you rebooking, and on a route with few daily departures that can mean losing a day.
The shape of the lateness matters here. Flights on this route are not late often, but when they are late they are late by about 85 minutes — long enough to lose a connection or an evening. The on-time percentage looks reassuring and understates the consequence of being on the wrong flight.
The two directions do not behave alike. ORD to DTW arrives on time 8.7 points less often than the outbound. Delay accumulates through the flying day, so whichever direction is scheduled later tends to carry the worse record — which is an argument for booking the morning departure if the choice exists.
Which airline should you fly on this route?
Over March 2025 – August 2026, Envoy Air arrived on time most often on DTW to ORD. Delta Air Lines was late most often.
Every airline on DTW to ORD
Ranked by how many flights each one operated. A carrier with fewer than 100 flights in the period is listed but not graded.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Avg delay | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 204 | 82.23% | 3.43% | 77 min | C |
| Envoy Air | 124 | 83.62% | 6.45% | 80 min | C |
| Delta Air Lines | 109 | 63% | 8.26% | 109 min | F |
| United Airlines | 82 | 85.19% | 1.22% | 32 min | — |
| Republic Airways | 5 | 80% | 0% | 180 min | — |
The return leg
ORD to DTW Chicago back to Detroit 70.48% on time DOther routes from Detroit
Common questions
Are flights from Detroit to Chicago usually delayed?
79.16% of flights on the DTW to ORD route arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, so roughly 2 in every ten arrived late. That is about the same as the average route in this record.
Which airline is most on time from Detroit to Chicago?
Envoy Air, at 83.62% on time across 124 flights. The least punctual on the route was Delta Air Lines at 63%.
How often are DTW to ORD flights cancelled?
4.77% of scheduled flights did not operate — about 48 in every thousand. That is high enough that cancellation, not delay, is the risk worth planning around.
When DTW to ORD flights are late, how late are they?
About 85 minutes on average across the flights that arrived more than 15 minutes behind schedule.
What these figures do and do not tell you
Everything on this page is counted from the flights that actually operated on DTW to ORD during March 2025 – August 2026, as reported by the airlines to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. "On time" is the federal definition: arriving at the gate within 15 minutes of the scheduled time.
A route's record is a description of the past, not a forecast. Weather, air traffic control and the aircraft's earlier flights that day drive most delays, and none of them are predictable from a historical rate. What the record does tell you is whether this route runs late more often than others, and which carrier on it has the better history — which is the part you can actually act on when you book.
Cancellations are counted separately from delays because they are a different problem for a traveller: a late flight still gets you there. How the grade is calculated →