Route reliability record
MDW→CMH
Chicago to Columbus
- Flights
- 1,247
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 283 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,247 MDW to CMH flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly MDW to CMH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.5%, against 81.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
81.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,226 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.52%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
81.4% on time across 1,247 flights
These figures cover 1,247 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MDW to CMH
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 | 1,247 | 81.4% | 55 min | 1.52% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Columbus
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. MDW → CMHChicago to Columbus | Southwest Airlines | 80.2% | 81.4% | 1.52% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. ORD → CMHChicago to Columbus | Republic Airways | 74.2% | 76.6% | 3.19% | 11am–2pm, Thu | YX 3614 21:10 |
| 3. ORD → CMHChicago to Columbus | Envoy Air | 72.5% | 74.0% | 2.06% | 5am–8am, Tue | MQ 3447 20:59 |
| 4. ORD → CMHChicago to Columbus | United Airlines | 70.3% | 71.4% | 1.48% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1492 18:10 |
| 5. ORD → CMHChicago to Columbus | SkyWest Airlines | 65.0% | 68.3% | 4.86% | 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 18 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–8am70 flights90.0%
- 8am–11am291 flights90.6%
- 11am–2pm235 flights86.6%
- 2pm–5pm169 flights78.8%
- 5pm–8pm263 flights72.3%
- 8pm–5am219 flights73.6%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.6% of the time, against 72.3% for the evening window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 291 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
July is the worst month at 72.1% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 91.4%. 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 131 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.7%. 13 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 55% of the 12,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 2%Security
- 1%Extreme weather
55% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 12,424 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.52% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.3% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 283 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 80.8% on time across 1,251 flights, within half a point 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 1,247 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 CMH 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 91.4% on time and July 72.1%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,226 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MDW to CMH questions
How often is MDW to CMH 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 18.6% of the 1,247 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is MDW to CMH compared with the rest of the country?
81.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MDW to CMH?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 72.3%, 18 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 July delays on MDW to CMH?
July is the weakest month at 72.1% on time, compared with 91.4% in September. Across the year that is 19 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
- CMH to MDW — the return legseparate record
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- MDW to ATL, a related route79.8%
- ORD to CMH, a related route73.1%
- MDW to PHX, a related route75.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record81.4%
- 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. MDW to CMH and CMH to MDW 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.