Route reliability record
MDW→PIT
Chicago to Pittsburgh
- Flights
- 1,132
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 402 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 3 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 an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,132 MDW to PIT flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly MDW to PIT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.8%, against 80.2% 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
80.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,118 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.2% on time across 1,132 flights
These figures cover 1,132 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 PIT
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 | 1,132 | 80.2% | 58 min | 1.24% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Pittsburgh
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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → PITChicago to Pittsburgh | Republic Airways | 79.6% | 81.4% | 2.27% | 5am–8am, Tue | YX 3464 21:20 |
| 2. MDW → PITChicago to Pittsburgh | Southwest Airlines | 79.2% | 80.2% | 1.24% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. ORD → PITChicago to Pittsburgh | United Airlines | 75.0% | 75.8% | 1.01% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1285 07:25 |
| 4. ORD → PITChicago to Pittsburgh | American Airlines | 53.4% | 55.0% | 2.99% | 11am–2pm, 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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am79 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am280 flights90.2%
- 11am–2pm282 flights83.9%
- 2pm–5pm66 flights78.8%
- 5pm–8pm280 flights70.3%
- 8pm–5am145 flights66.4%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.6% of the time, against 66.4% for the overnight window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 282 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 68.6% on time, 28 points below April, the best at 96.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 115 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 72.9%. 14 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 53% of the 13,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
53% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 12,806 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 93.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.7% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 402 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 78.8% on time across 1,134 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 1,132 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 PIT 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. April runs 96.5% on time and July 68.6%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,118 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MDW to PIT questions
How often is MDW to PIT 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 19.8% of the 1,132 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MDW to PIT compared with the rest of the country?
80.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 MDW to PIT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.4%, 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 July delays on MDW to PIT?
July is the weakest month at 68.6% on time, compared with 96.5% in April. Across the year that is 28 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
- PIT to MDW — the return legseparate record
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- MDW to ATL, a related route79.8%
- ORD to PIT, a related route74.9%
- MDW to PHX, a related route75.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.2%
- 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 PIT and PIT 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.