Route reliability record
OMA→MDW
Omaha to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,357
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 423 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 roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,357 OMA to MDW flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly OMA to MDW: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Sunday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.0% of the time and Sunday flights 86.7%, against 80.4% 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
80.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,335 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.4% on time across 1,357 flights
These figures cover 1,357 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 OMA 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,357 | 80.4% | 54 min | 1.47% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Omaha 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. OMA → MDWOmaha to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 79.2% | 80.4% | 1.47% | 11am–2pm, Sun | — |
| 2. OMA → ORDOmaha to Chicago | United Airlines | 73.3% | 74.6% | 1.71% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 739 15:17 |
| 3. LNK → ORDLincoln to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 73.3% | 75.5% | 2.96% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 5910 07:30 |
| 4. OMA → ORDOmaha to Chicago | Envoy Air | 73.0% | 75.6% | 3.39% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. OMA → ORDOmaha to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 68.7% | 71.5% | 3.91% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
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 15 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–8am379 flights84.9%
- 8am–11am220 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm188 flights88.0%
- 2pm–5pm390 flights72.8%
- 5pm–8pm162 flights74.7%
- 8pm–5am18 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 88.0% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 72.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 390 flights scheduled in it.
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.
June is the worst month at 74.6% on time, 17 points below February, the best at 91.1%. 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 149 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.6%. 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 54% of the 14,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
54% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 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 14,083 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.47% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
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 roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 423 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.7% on time across 1,356 flights, 5 points below 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 1,357 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. February runs 91.1% on time and June 74.6%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,335 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OMA to MDW questions
How often is OMA to MDW 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 19.6% of the 1,357 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is OMA to MDW compared with the rest of the country?
80.4% 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 OMA to MDW?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 88.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 72.8%, 15 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 OMA to MDW?
June is the weakest month at 74.6% on time, compared with 91.1% in February. 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
- MDW to OMA — the return legseparate record
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- OMA to DEN, a related route76.1%
- ATL to MDW, a related route76.3%
- OMA to ORD, a related route74.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.4%
- 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. OMA to MDW and MDW to OMA 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.