The sector is held by NetJets Aviation and Southwest Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
BHM Birmingham to MDW Chicago
Birmingham -Shuttlesworth, the United States, to Midway International, the United States. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- About once a day
- Great circle
- 919 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 40m
- Door to door
- 8h 25m
What BHM to MDW looks like
The BHM to MDW sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Birmingham BHM to Chicago MDW is a short sector of 919 km by great circle, flown nonstop about once a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 919 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 40m.
Birmingham BHM is a large airport in the network held here, 84 scheduled destinations and 85.8 departures a day. Chicago MDW has 208 destinations and 305.1 departures a day.
Chicago carries about 3.6 times the departures of Birmingham, so a courier who has to be rebooked has far more to work with at one end of this pair than at the other.
Birmingham and Chicago keep the same clock all year, so the arrival time is the departure time plus the block and nothing else.
The pair sits inside the Americas, a corridor where the site already publishes 13 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on BHM to MDW from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| BHM to MDW | 1.29 | 9 | NetJets Aviation, Southwest Airlines |
| MDW to BHM | 1.43 | 10 | NetJets Aviation, Southwest Airlines |
Two carriers hold the sector, NetJets Aviation and Southwest Airlines, which gives a missed departure somewhere to go without leaving the nonstop.
Between them the two directions put about 19 departures a week on BHM to MDW, which is the number that decides whether a seat can be found today or on Thursday.
The clock from collection to signature
The same ground timings the route calculator starts from, applied to the 1h 40m block time on BHM to MDW. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to BHM | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At BHM before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| BHM to MDW in the air, estimated | 100 min | 6h 10m |
| Formalities at MDW | 90 min | 7h 40m |
| Delivery run in Chicago | 45 min | 8h 25m |
| Door to door | 505 min | 8h 25m |
On the desk standard ground timings, ninety minutes to collect and reach the airport, three hours at the airport before departure, ninety minutes of arrival formalities and a forty five minute delivery run, the door to door figure for BHM to MDW is 8h 25m.
A courier who leaves Birmingham at 09:00 local is on the ground in Chicago at about 10:40 local and at the door by 12:55 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Chicago, the last useful departure from Birmingham is around 14:05 local.
When the nonstop does not work
Every airport that joins the two ends, ranked by when they land, among the ones whose weaker leg is dependable enough to plan on. Connection time is allowed for the size of the hub. 23 of them join BHM to MDW.
| Connecting at | BHM to hub, flights a day | Hub to MDW, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nashville BNA | 3.71 | 8 | 921 | 3h 51m |
| Atlanta ATL | 9.57 | 4.86 | 1,168 | 4h 02m |
| Detroit DTW | 2.43 | 6.14 | 1,374 | 4h 04m |
| Charlotte CLT | 7.71 | 2.43 | 1,504 | 4h 32m |
| Raleigh RDU | 0.57 | 3.43 | 1,788 | 4h 41m |
| Washington DC DCA | 3 | 6.71 | 2,015 | 4h 50m |
One nonstop a day means one chance a day, so the connections below are what a consignment that arrives at BHM in the afternoon actually flies on.
23 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Nashville BNA, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 3.7 times a day.
Through BNA the routing covers 921 km against the 919 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 51m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 90 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 2h 11m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Atlanta ATL at 4h 02m and Detroit DTW at 4h 04m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Birmingham, Atlanta ATL is 216 km away by great circle and carries 253 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves Chicago, Chicago ORD is 25 km away by great circle and carries 295 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Industry within reach of the two ends
Public manufacturing and research sites whose logistics run through BHM or MDW. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- Mercedes-Benz, Tuscaloosa, AlabamaSUV assembly for world markets. The same transatlantic pattern as BMW Spartanburg. Logistics through Birmingham BHM.
Plan Birmingham to Chicago yourself
The same tool the dispatchers use, open to anybody and free. It is loaded with this pair already. Change either end, add a stopover or a preferred airline, and it works out the connection, the transit and the door to door clock, with the real departures underneath. Put it on your own site if it is useful to you.
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Restrictions
Where this came from, and where to look next
- Carriers and frequencies: AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics, retrieved 2026-09-07. Average daily flights, not a timetable.
- Distances: great circle from published coordinates. They read short against a flown track, which is why the block time above applies a factor to them.
- Block and connection times: the same model the route calculator lower down this page runs, at the same rounding.
- Restrictions: the airport notes file, checked 2026-09-07.
- Industrial sites: public company information. Nothing here says or implies that any company named is a customer of any courier operator.
Who publishes this. OnBoard Courier is a placement desk in Dubai. An assignment is carried out by a vetted partner operator, with the desk as the single point of contact from the quote to the signature. This page exists because our own dispatchers need the answer for BHM to MDW in the twenty minutes before a promise is made, and a reference only one operator can read is not a reference. Free to read, quote and cite. Found an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
If you need something moved rather than looked up, the desk prices a hand carry in fifteen minutes.
- The BHM airport entry
- The MDW airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- The route calculator
More pairs through BHM and MDW: Atlanta to Birmingham, Chicago to Birmingham, Birmingham to Detroit, Houston to Birmingham, Birmingham to Charlotte, Birmingham to Miami, Birmingham to Dallas, Birmingham to Denver.