OnTimeStats

Historical on-time performance

Chicago to Los Angeles

1,751 miData through Dec 2025Source: US DOT · BTS

Flights on MDW–LAX arrive on time 76% of the time over the last 12 months.

On-time rate76%arrived within 15 min
p90 delay40 min1 in 10 flights is worse (tail risk)
Cancelled0.7%of scheduled flights

based on 1,360 flights over the last 12 months. On-time means arriving within 15 minutes (BTS standard).

By airline

How each carrier compares

  • Southwest Airlines
    On-time76%
    Medianon time
    p9040 min
    Cancel0.7%
    Flights1,360

Why flights run late

Delay causes

  • Airline42%
  • Weather2%
  • Air traffic (NAS)14%
  • Late aircraft41%
  • Security1%

Most delay minutes here are attributed to Airline.

Over time

On-time trend

By season

On-time rate by month

When to fly

Best time to fly MDW → LAX

All airlines · rolling 36 months (2023-01 .. 2025-12).

Best time of day

Mornings are the most reliable time of day to fly this route — 84% on time.

  • Mornings84% on time · p90 20 min · 1,401 flights
  • Middays77% on time · p90 30 min · 593 flights
  • Afternoons66% on time · p90 45 min · 503 flights
  • Evenings62% on time · p90 60 min · 660 flights
  • Overnights59% on time · p90 65 min · 1,017 flights

Best day of week

On-time rates are fairly even by day on this route — ranging from 68% to 74% on time.

  • Saturdays74% on time · p90 35 min · 462 flights
  • Wednesdays74% on time · p90 40 min · 624 flights
  • Tuesdays73% on time · p90 45 min · 629 flights
  • Mondays71% on time · p90 40 min · 637 flights
  • Thursdays70% on time · p90 55 min · 623 flights
  • Fridays68% on time · p90 45 min · 633 flights
  • Sundays68% on time · p90 55 min · 566 flights
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Methodology

A flight is on time when it arrives within 15 minutes of schedule — the US DOT / BTS standard. Median and p90(the “1-in-10 bad day”) are read from the full arrival-delay distribution, never averaged across periods.

Figures cover a carrier’s own BTS-coded flights. Cells below ~200 flights are flagged as limited data. All numbers are pre-computed from public BTS On-Time Performance data.