Route reliability record
DAL→MDW
Dallas to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,192
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 793 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 2,192 DAL to MDW flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly DAL to MDW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.7%, against 69.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 77 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,133 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.05%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
69.6% on time across 2,192 flights
These figures cover 2,192 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DAL to MDW
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 2,192 | 69.6% | 53 min | 2.05% | C |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas to Chicago
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → ORDDallas-Fort Worth to Chicago | United Airlines | 69.6% | 70.9% | 1.78% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 1517 19:27 |
| 2. DAL → MDWDallas to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 68.2% | 69.6% | 2.05% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. DFW → ORDDallas-Fort Worth to Chicago | Frontier Airlines | 67.7% | 70.0% | 3.25% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. DFW → ORDDallas-Fort Worth to Chicago | American Airlines | 65.4% | 67.5% | 3.14% | 5am–8am, Thu | AA 1290 17:12 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 41 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am425 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am398 flights77.6%
- 11am–2pm232 flights69.8%
- 2pm–5pm479 flights63.4%
- 5pm–8pm353 flights60.1%
- 8pm–5am305 flights49.8%
Scale runs 40% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.8% on time, against 90.8% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 479 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DAL to MDW by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DAL to MDW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 90.8% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 49.8%, a wide gap of 41.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am90.8%
- 8–11am77.6%
- 11am–2pm69.8%
- 2–5pm63.4%
- 5–8pm60.1%
- 8pm–5am49.8%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
June is the worst month at 56.4% on time, 26 points below February, the best at 82.1%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 227 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 65.8%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 35,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 34,588 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 90.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.05% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.64%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 793 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.1% on time across 2,204 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,192 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MDW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 82.1% on time and June 56.4%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,133 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DAL to MDW questions
How often is DAL to MDW delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.4% of the 2,192 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is DAL to MDW compared with the rest of the country?
69.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DAL to MDW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 49.8%, 41 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are June delays on DAL to MDW?
June is the weakest month at 56.4% on time, compared with 82.1% in February. Across the year that is 26 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- MDW to DAL — the return legseparate record
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.8%
- ATL to MDW, a related route75.2%
- DAL to ATL, a related route78.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record69.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. DAL to MDW and MDW to DAL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.