Route reliability record
MCO→MDW
Orlando to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,723
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 990 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,723 MCO to MDW flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly MCO to MDW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 80.0%, against 70.0% 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 73 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,655 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.76%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
69.6% on time across 2,532 flights
These figures cover 2,723 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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 MCO 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 191 | 75.1% | 86 min | 1.05% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,532 | 69.6% | 58 min | 1.82% | C |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando 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. MCO → ORDOrlando to Chicago | United Airlines | 73.6% | 74.3% | 0.95% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 2475 12:34 |
| 2. MCO → ORDOrlando to Chicago | American Airlines | 69.7% | 71.2% | 2.08% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. MCO → MDWOrlando to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 68.3% | 69.6% | 1.82% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. MCO → ORDOrlando to Chicago | Frontier Airlines | 67.4% | 69.2% | 2.56% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. MCO → ORDOrlando to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 66.7% | 67.6% | 1.34% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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.
- 5am–8am418 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am461 flights81.8%
- 11am–2pm386 flights76.4%
- 2pm–5pm506 flights65.3%
- 5pm–8pm616 flights54.6%
- 8pm–5am336 flights54.2%
Scale runs 45% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.2% on time, against 91.7% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 616 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MCO 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 MCO to MDW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 54.2%, a wide gap of 37.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.7%
- 8–11am81.8%
- 11am–2pm76.4%
- 2–5pm65.3%
- 5–8pm54.6%
- 8pm–5am54.2%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 60.0% on time, 22 points below September, the best at 82.3%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 286 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.4%, a spread of 21 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 48,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 48,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 47,564 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 91.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.76% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.73%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.0% 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 990 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 75.2% on time across 2,707 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,723 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. September runs 82.3% on time and August 60.0%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,655 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to MDW questions
How often is MCO 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 30.0% of the 2,723 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MCO to MDW compared with the rest of the country?
70.0% 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 MCO to MDW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 54.2%, 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 August delays on MCO to MDW?
August is the weakest month at 60.0% on time, compared with 82.3% in September. Across the year that is 22 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 MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to MDW75.1%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to MDW69.6%
- MCO to ATL, a related route74.9%
- ATL to MDW, a related route75.2%
- MCO to EWR, a related route75.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record75.1%
- 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. MCO to MDW and MDW to MCO 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.