Route reliability record
MDW→DCA
Chicago to Washington
- Flights
- 2,100
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 601 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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,100 MDW to DCA flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly MDW to DCA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.7%, against 68.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 84 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,037 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.95%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
68.9% on time across 2,100 flights
These figures cover 2,100 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 MDW to DCA
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 | 2,100 | 68.9% | 57 min | 1.95% | C |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Washington
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. MDW → BWIChicago to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 75.7% | 77.8% | 2.74% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | — |
| 2. ORD → IADChicago to Washington | United Airlines | 75.3% | 75.9% | 0.76% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. ORD → BWIChicago to Baltimore | Envoy Air | 74.4% | 77.3% | 3.80% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. ORD → BWIChicago to Baltimore | United Airlines | 69.2% | 70.3% | 1.59% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. ORD → DCAChicago to Washington | United Airlines | 68.6% | 70.1% | 2.14% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 1077 06:00 |
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 39 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am353 flights90.3%
- 8am–11am362 flights87.4%
- 11am–2pm490 flights64.8%
- 2pm–5pm277 flights57.7%
- 5pm–8pm330 flights51.8%
- 8pm–5am288 flights55.6%
Scale runs 45% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.8% on time, against 90.3% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 490 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MDW to DCA 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 MDW to DCA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 90.3% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 51.8%, a wide gap of 38.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am90.3%
- 8–11am87.4%
- 11am–2pm64.8%
- 2–5pm57.7%
- 5–8pm51.8%
- 8pm–5am55.6%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 78.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 181 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.4%, a spread of 13 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 36,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 to one. The split is drawn from 35,976 reported delay minutes.
41% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 15,000 minutes out of 36,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.95% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.9% 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 601 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 75.5% on time across 2,099 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,100 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 DCA 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 78.4% on time and March 61.5%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,037 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MDW to DCA questions
How often is MDW to DCA delayed?
About 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 31.1% of the 2,100 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MDW to DCA compared with the rest of the country?
68.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MDW to DCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 51.8%, 39 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 March delays on MDW to DCA?
March is the weakest month at 61.5% on time, compared with 78.4% in September. Across the year that is 17 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
- DCA to MDW — the return legseparate record
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- MDW to ATL, a related route78.7%
- BOS to DCA, a related route72.6%
- MDW to PHX, a related route74.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record68.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MDW to DCA and DCA 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.