The sector is held by Southwest Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
ELP El Paso to MDW Chicago
El Paso International, 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
- 1,989 km
- Block, estimated
- 3h 02m
- Door to door
- 9h 47m
What ELP to MDW looks like
The ELP to MDW sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
El Paso ELP to Chicago MDW is a medium haul sector of 1,989 km by great circle, flown nonstop about once a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,989 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 3h 02m.
El Paso ELP is a mid sized airport in the network held here, 77 scheduled destinations and 81.6 departures a day. Chicago MDW has 208 destinations and 305.1 departures a day.
Chicago carries about 3.7 times the departures of El Paso, so a courier who has to be rebooked has far more to work with at one end of this pair than at the other.
Chicago is one hour ahead of El Paso 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 ELP to MDW from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| ELP to MDW | 1.14 | 8 | Southwest Airlines |
| MDW to ELP | 1.14 | 8 | 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.
Between them the two directions put about 16 departures a week on ELP 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 3h 02m block time on ELP 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 ELP | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At ELP before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| ELP to MDW in the air, estimated | 182 min | 7h 32m |
| Formalities at MDW | 90 min | 9h 02m |
| Delivery run in Chicago | 45 min | 9h 47m |
| Door to door | 587 min | 9h 47m |
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 ELP to MDW is 9h 47m.
A courier who leaves El Paso at 09:00 local is on the ground in Chicago at about 13:02 local and at the door by 15:17 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Chicago, the last useful departure from El Paso is around 11:43 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. 13 of them join ELP to MDW.
| Connecting at | ELP to hub, flights a day | Hub to MDW, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albuquerque ABQ | 1.43 | 1.14 | 2,161 | 4h 50m |
| Dallas DAL | 6 | 7.43 | 2,179 | 5h 02m |
| Denver DEN | 5.71 | 7.14 | 2,346 | 5h 30m |
| Houston HOU | 3.29 | 7.14 | 2,597 | 5h 34m |
| Phoenix PHX | 7.57 | 7.43 | 2,878 | 6h 02m |
| Atlanta ATL | 2.29 | 4.86 | 3,012 | 6h 21m |
One nonstop a day means one chance a day, so the connections below are what a consignment that arrives at ELP in the afternoon actually flies on.
13 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Albuquerque ABQ, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.
Through ABQ the routing covers 2,161 km against the 1,989 km nonstop track and takes about 4h 50m 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 48m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Dallas DAL at 5h 02m and Denver DEN at 5h 30m 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.
Plan El Paso 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.
min
min
min
min
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 ELP 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 ELP airport entry
- The MDW airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- The written lane, El Paso to Ciudad Juarez
- The route calculator
More pairs through ELP and MDW: Atlanta to El Paso, El Paso to Phoenix, El Paso to Houston, El Paso to Los Angeles, Seattle to El Paso, El Paso to Chicago, San Diego to El Paso, Dallas to El Paso.