Route reliability record
FLL→MDW
Fort Lauderdale to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,128
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,167 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,128 FLL to MDW flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly FLL to MDW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.4%, against 70.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 67 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,103 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
70.9% on time across 1,128 flights
These figures cover 1,128 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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
Which airline is most reliable on FLL 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 | 1,128 | 70.9% | 55 min | 1.24% | C |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fort Lauderdale 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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. FLL → ORDFort Lauderdale to Chicago | United Airlines | 74.1% | 74.7% | 0.74% | 5am–8am, Thu | UA 1755 12:26 |
| 2. MIA → ORDMiami to Chicago | American Airlines | 70.3% | 71.6% | 1.86% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. MIA → ORDMiami to Chicago | United Airlines | 70.1% | 70.7% | 0.87% | 8am–11am, Wed | UA 1983 12:23 |
| 4. FLL → MDWFort Lauderdale to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 70.0% | 70.9% | 1.24% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 5. FLL → ORDFort Lauderdale to Chicago | American Airlines | 68.9% | 70.0% | 1.54% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 38 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am362 flights90.4%
- 8am–11am56 flights90.6%
- 11am–2pm244 flights66.8%
- 2pm–5pm156 flights55.6%
- 5pm–8pm195 flights52.4%
- 8pm–5am115 flights60.4%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.4% on time, against 90.6% for the 8am–11am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
December is the weak month at 60.4% on time, against 85.7% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 109 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.7%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% 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 18 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 17,683 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 6,212 of the 18,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.98%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,167 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.0% on time across 1,127 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,128 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. October runs 85.7% on time and December 60.4%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,103 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FLL to MDW questions
How often is FLL 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 29.1% of the 1,128 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is FLL to MDW compared with the rest of the country?
70.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FLL to MDW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 52.4%, 38 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 December delays on FLL to MDW?
December is the weakest month at 60.4% on time, compared with 85.7% in October. Across the year that is 25 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 FLL — the return legseparate record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- FLL to ATL, a related route71.8%
- ATL to MDW, a related route76.3%
- FLL to EWR, a related route70.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record70.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. FLL to MDW and MDW to FLL 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.