Route reliability record
MCI→MDW
Kansas City to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,112
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 404 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 2,112 MCI to MDW flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly MCI to MDW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.3%, against 80.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,083 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.95%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.4% on time across 2,112 flights
These figures cover 2,112 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MCI 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 | 2,112 | 80.4% | 52 min | 0.95% | B+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Kansas City 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. MCI → MDWKansas City to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 79.6% | 80.4% | 0.95% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. MCI → ORDKansas City to Chicago | Republic Airways | 78.3% | 79.9% | 1.95% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 3. MCI → ORDKansas City to Chicago | United Airlines | 73.9% | 75.6% | 2.26% | 8am–11am, Thu | UA 1491 08:00 |
| 4. MCI → ORDKansas City to Chicago | Envoy Air | 73.6% | 76.4% | 3.60% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 5. MCI → ORDKansas City to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 66.3% | 69.1% | 4.10% | 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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am457 flights90.5%
- 8am–11am417 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm262 flights88.8%
- 2pm–5pm475 flights72.6%
- 5pm–8pm385 flights68.4%
- 8pm–5am116 flights64.0%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.0% on time, against 90.5% 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 475 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MCI 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 MCI to MDW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 90.5% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 64.0%, a wide gap of 26.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am90.5%
- 8–11am88.4%
- 11am–2pm88.8%
- 2–5pm72.6%
- 5–8pm68.4%
- 8pm–5am64.0%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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 73.1% on time, 16 points below February, the best at 89.0%. 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 213 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.1%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 25 to one. The split is drawn from 20,557 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 90.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.95% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.43%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.1% 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 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 404 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 78.0% on time across 2,108 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 2,112 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 89.0% on time and June 73.1%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,083 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCI to MDW questions
How often is MCI to MDW delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.6% of the 2,112 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is MCI to MDW compared with the rest of the country?
80.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCI to MDW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.0%, 27 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 MCI to MDW?
June is the weakest month at 73.1% on time, compared with 89.0% in February. Across the year that is 16 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 MCI — the return legseparate record
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- MCI to DEN, a related route78.1%
- ATL to MDW, a related route75.2%
- MCI to ORD, a related route74.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.4%
- 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. MCI to MDW and MDW to MCI are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed MCI to MDW’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.