Route reliability record
LGA→MDW
New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,391
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 725 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,391 LGA to MDW flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly LGA to MDW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 76.7%, against 70.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 71 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,252 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.23%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
70.2% on time across 2,391 flights
These figures cover 2,391 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 LGA 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 | 2,391 | 70.2% | 67 min | 5.23% | C− |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York 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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. HPN → ORDWhite Plains to Chicago | Envoy Air | 74.9% | 78.1% | 4.10% | 5am–8am, Sat | MQ 3496 07:10 |
| 2. EWR → ORDNewark to Chicago | American Airlines | 73.1% | 76.8% | 4.76% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. JFK → ORDNew York to Chicago | Republic Airways | 71.9% | 76.3% | 5.78% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 4. JFK → ORDNew York to Chicago | American Airlines | 69.3% | 73.1% | 5.17% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 5. EWR → ORDNewark to Chicago | United Airlines | 68.3% | 70.3% | 2.83% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1875 11:25 |
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 29 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am476 flights85.0%
- 8am–11am250 flights76.2%
- 11am–2pm459 flights72.0%
- 2pm–5pm496 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm386 flights60.6%
- 8pm–5am324 flights55.8%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.8% on time, against 85.0% 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 496 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LGA 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 LGA to MDW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 55.8%, a wide gap of 29.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.0%
- 8–11am76.2%
- 11am–2pm72.0%
- 2–5pm67.6%
- 5–8pm60.6%
- 8pm–5am55.8%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 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.
August is the worst month at 55.6% on time, 33 points below January, the best at 88.9%. 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 211 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 76.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.5%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 45,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 45,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 44,935 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 85.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.23%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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 actually costs
10.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 725 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 runs 68.1% on time across 2,391 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,391 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 delay figures matter less here than the 5.23% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,252 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGA to MDW questions
How often is LGA 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 29.8% of the 2,391 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is LGA to MDW compared with the rest of the country?
70.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 LGA to MDW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.8%, 29 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 August delays on LGA to MDW?
August is the weakest month at 55.6% on time, compared with 88.9% in January. Across the year that is 33 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 LGA — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- ATL to MDW, a related route75.2%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record70.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LGA to MDW and MDW to LGA 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.