ORD to DTW flight delays
Chicago, IL (ORD) Detroit, MI (DTW) · 235 miles
523 flights · March 2025 – August 2026 · US Bureau of Transportation Statistics
70.48%
Arrived on time
Within 15 minutes of schedule
4.78%
Cancelled
Share of scheduled flights
86 min
When late, late by
Average across delayed arrivals
26 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 13.5 points more often than SkyWest Airlines 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: 4.78% 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 two directions do not behave alike. DTW to ORD arrives on time 8.7 points more 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.
Flights from Chicago to Detroit run late more often than the average route, though not severely.
Which airline should you fly on this route?
Over March 2025 – August 2026, Envoy Air arrived on time most often on ORD to DTW. SkyWest Airlines was late most often.
Every airline on ORD to DTW
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 | 205 | 67.69% | 4.88% | 82 min | D |
| Envoy Air | 123 | 81.2% | 4.88% | 52 min | C |
| Delta Air Lines | 109 | 68% | 8.26% | 112 min | F |
| United Airlines | 81 | 64.2% | 0% | 93 min | — |
| Republic Airways | 5 | 80% | 0% | 84 min | — |
The return leg
DTW to ORD Detroit back to Chicago 79.16% on time DOther routes from Chicago
Common questions
Are flights from Chicago to Detroit usually delayed?
70.48% of flights on the ORD to DTW route arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, so roughly 3 in every ten arrived late. That is worse than the average route in this record.
Which airline is most on time from Chicago to Detroit?
Envoy Air, at 81.2% on time across 123 flights. The least punctual on the route was SkyWest Airlines at 67.69%.
How often are ORD to DTW flights cancelled?
4.78% 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 ORD to DTW flights are late, how late are they?
About 86 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 ORD to DTW 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 →