The sector is held by Southwest Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
MDW Chicago to RDU Raleigh
Midway International, the United States, to Raleigh Durham, the United States. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 3.7 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,016 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 48m
- Door to door
- 8h 33m
What MDW to RDU looks like
The MDW to RDU sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Chicago MDW to Raleigh RDU is a short sector of 1,016 km by great circle, flown nonstop 3.7 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,016 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 48m.
Chicago MDW is a major hub in the network held here, 208 scheduled destinations and 305.1 departures a day. Raleigh RDU has 152 destinations and 243.8 departures a day.
Raleigh 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 RDU from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| MDW to RDU | 3.71 | 26 | Southwest Airlines |
| RDU to MDW | 3.43 | 24 | 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 3.7 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 50 departures a week on MDW to RDU, 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 48m block time on MDW to RDU. 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 RDU in the air, estimated | 108 min | 6h 18m |
| Formalities at RDU | 90 min | 7h 48m |
| Delivery run in Raleigh | 45 min | 8h 33m |
| Door to door | 513 min | 8h 33m |
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 RDU is 8h 33m.
A courier who leaves Chicago at 09:00 local is on the ground in Raleigh at about 11:48 local and at the door by 14:03 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Raleigh, the last useful departure from Chicago is around 12:57 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. 42 of them join MDW to RDU.
| Connecting at | MDW to hub, flights a day | Hub to RDU, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Columbus CMH | 4.71 | 1.29 | 1,036 | 3h 46m |
| Indianapolis IND | 2.71 | 1.29 | 1,046 | 3h 47m |
| Detroit DTW | 6.14 | 5.14 | 1,174 | 3h 49m |
| Chicago ORD | 0.57 | 13.71 | 1,064 | 3h 52m |
| Cleveland CLE | 4.57 | 1 | 1,162 | 3h 57m |
| Pittsburgh PIT | 4 | 2.86 | 1,174 | 3h 59m |
With 3.7 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.
42 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Columbus CMH, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.
Through CMH the routing covers 1,036 km against the 1,016 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 46m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 75 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 1h 58m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Indianapolis IND at 3h 47m and Detroit DTW at 3h 49m 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 Raleigh, Charlotte CLT is 209 km away by great circle and carries 219 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Plan Chicago to Raleigh 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 RDU 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 RDU: Detroit to Chicago, Phoenix to Chicago, Chicago to San Diego, Charlotte to Chicago, Indianapolis to Chicago, El Paso to Chicago, Chicago to Guadalajara, Chicago to Minneapolis.