Route reliability record
MDW→HOU
Chicago to Houston
- Flights
- 1,841
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 937 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,841 MDW to HOU flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly MDW to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.9%, against 73.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 40 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,813 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
73.6% on time across 1,841 flights
These figures cover 1,841 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 HOU
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 | 1,841 | 73.6% | 48 min | 1.30% | C |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Houston
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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → IAHChicago to Houston | United Airlines | 78.1% | 78.6% | 0.65% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 2426 20:10 |
| 2. MDW → HOUChicago to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 72.6% | 73.6% | 1.30% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. ORD → IAHChicago to Houston | American Airlines | 58.8% | 60.6% | 3.01% | 8am–11am, Tue | AA 3144 20:59 |
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 24 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–8am414 flights85.9%
- 8am–11am311 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm250 flights70.9%
- 2pm–5pm181 flights68.3%
- 5pm–8pm349 flights61.8%
- 8pm–5am336 flights66.0%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.8% on time, against 85.9% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 414 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 57.8% on time, 32 points below September, the best at 89.4%. 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 186 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.5%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
36% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 22,800 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,454 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.30% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.9% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 937 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 72.7% on time across 1,834 flights, within about 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 1,841 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 HOU 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 89.4% on time and June 57.8%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,813 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MDW to HOU questions
How often is MDW to HOU delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.4% of the 1,841 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is MDW to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
73.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 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 HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.8%, 24 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 MDW to HOU?
June is the weakest month at 57.8% on time, compared with 89.4% in September. Across the year that is 32 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
- HOU to MDW — the return legseparate record
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- MDW to ATL, a related route79.8%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.1%
- MDW to PHX, a related route75.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.6%
- 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 HOU and HOU 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.