Route reliability record
PIT→MDW
Pittsburgh to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,134
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 402 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, about a point 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 1,134 PIT to MDW flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly PIT to MDW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.0% of the time and Saturday flights 84.4%, against 78.8% 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
78.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,116 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.97%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
78.8% on time across 1,134 flights
These figures cover 1,134 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 PIT 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 | 1,134 | 78.8% | 61 min | 0.97% | B+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Pittsburgh 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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PIT → ORDPittsburgh to Chicago | Republic Airways | 82.8% | 84.2% | 1.66% | 5am–8am, Tue | YX 3461 08:45 |
| 2. PIT → MDWPittsburgh to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 78.0% | 78.8% | 0.97% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 3. PIT → ORDPittsburgh to Chicago | United Airlines | 76.5% | 77.9% | 1.86% | 11am–2pm, Fri | — |
| 4. PIT → ORDPittsburgh to Chicago | American Airlines | 67.8% | 69.9% | 2.98% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 26 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–8am247 flights85.7%
- 8am–11am188 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm135 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm203 flights79.5%
- 5pm–8pm198 flights72.7%
- 8pm–5am163 flights60.4%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.4% on time, against 86.0% for the 8am–11am 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 247 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
December is the weak month at 64.8% on time, against 89.9% in February. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 114 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 72.9%. 12 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 42% 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
42% 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 19 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 14,477 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 86.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.97% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.62%.
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 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 80.2% on time across 1,132 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 1,134 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 89.9% on time and December 64.8%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,116 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PIT to MDW questions
How often is PIT 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 21.2% of the 1,134 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is PIT to MDW compared with the rest of the country?
78.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PIT to MDW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.4%, 26 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 December delays on PIT to MDW?
December is the weakest month at 64.8% on time, compared with 89.9% in February. Across the year that is 25 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 PIT — the return legseparate record
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- PIT to ORD, a related route78.6%
- ATL to MDW, a related route76.3%
- PIT to LGA, a related route80.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.8%
- 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. PIT to MDW and MDW to PIT 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.