The sector is held by Southwest Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
MDW Chicago to LGA New York
Midway International, the United States, to LaGuardia Airport, the United States. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 7.9 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,164 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 59m
- Door to door
- 8h 44m
What MDW to LGA looks like
The MDW to LGA sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Chicago MDW to New York LGA is a short sector of 1,164 km by great circle, flown nonstop 7.9 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,164 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 59m.
Chicago MDW is a major hub in the network held here, 208 scheduled destinations and 305.1 departures a day. New York LGA has 109 destinations and 543.3 departures a day.
New York is one hour ahead of Chicago all year.
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 MDW to LGA from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| MDW to LGA | 7.86 | 55 | Southwest Airlines |
| LGA to MDW | 7.71 | 54 | Southwest Airlines |
One carrier holds the sector, Southwest Airlines, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.
At 7.9 times a day there is usually another departure within a few hours, which is what makes a same day booking on this pair realistic.
Between them the two directions put about 109 departures a week on MDW to LGA, 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 59m block time on MDW to LGA. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to MDW | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At MDW before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| MDW to LGA in the air, estimated | 119 min | 6h 29m |
| Formalities at LGA | 90 min | 7h 59m |
| Delivery run in New York | 45 min | 8h 44m |
| Door to door | 524 min | 8h 44m |
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 MDW to LGA is 8h 44m.
A courier who leaves Chicago at 09:00 local is on the ground in New York at about 11:59 local and at the door by 14:14 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in New York, the last useful departure from Chicago is around 12:46 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. 31 of them join MDW to LGA.
| Connecting at | MDW to hub, flights a day | Hub to LGA, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Milwaukee MKE | 3.43 | 3.86 | 1,315 | 3h 42m |
| Detroit DTW | 6.14 | 2.71 | 1,172 | 3h 49m |
| Baltimore BWI | 5.71 | 0.71 | 1,278 | 3h 56m |
| Cleveland CLE | 4.57 | 8.14 | 1,164 | 3h 57m |
| Pittsburgh PIT | 4 | 10.86 | 1,183 | 3h 59m |
| Indianapolis IND | 2.71 | 9.14 | 1,321 | 3h 59m |
With 7.9 times a day on the nonstop, a connection here is a disruption plan rather than a routing, and it is listed because a closed runway or a cancellation wave is exactly when nobody has time to work it out.
31 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Milwaukee MKE, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 3.4 times a day.
Through MKE the routing covers 1,315 km against the 1,164 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 42m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 60 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 1h 43m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Detroit DTW at 3h 49m and Baltimore BWI at 3h 56m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
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.
If nothing suitable leaves New York, New York JFK is 17 km away by great circle and carries 227 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Plan Chicago to New York 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 MDW to LGA 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.
More pairs through MDW and LGA: New York to Atlanta, New York to Boston, New York to Chicago, New York to Detroit, New York to Toronto, New York to Miami, New York to Houston, New York to Montreal.