The sector is held by Southwest Airlines and Jet Linx Aviation.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
HOU Houston to MDW Chicago
William P Hobby, the United States, to Midway International, the United States. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 7.1 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,510 km
- Block, estimated
- 2h 26m
- Door to door
- 9h 11m
What HOU to MDW looks like
The HOU to MDW sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Houston HOU to Chicago MDW is a medium haul sector of 1,510 km by great circle, flown nonstop 7.1 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,510 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 2h 26m.
Houston HOU is a large airport in the network held here, 145 scheduled destinations and 205.5 departures a day. Chicago MDW has 208 destinations and 305.1 departures a day.
Houston 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 HOU to MDW from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| HOU to MDW | 7.14 | 50 | Southwest Airlines |
| MDW to HOU | 6.43 | 45 | Jet Linx Aviation, Southwest Airlines |
Two carriers hold the sector, Southwest Airlines and Jet Linx Aviation, which gives a missed departure somewhere to go without leaving the nonstop.
At 7.1 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 95 departures a week on HOU 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 2h 26m block time on HOU 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 HOU | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At HOU before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| HOU to MDW in the air, estimated | 146 min | 6h 56m |
| Formalities at MDW | 90 min | 8h 26m |
| Delivery run in Chicago | 45 min | 9h 11m |
| Door to door | 551 min | 9h 11m |
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 HOU to MDW is 9h 11m.
A courier who leaves Houston at 09:00 local is on the ground in Chicago at about 11:26 local and at the door by 13:41 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Chicago, the last useful departure from Houston is around 13:19 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. 37 of them join HOU to MDW.
| Connecting at | HOU to hub, flights a day | Hub to MDW, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| St Louis STL | 5 | 6.29 | 1,512 | 4h 16m |
| Memphis MEM | 2.86 | 2.29 | 1,554 | 4h 17m |
| Kansas City MCI | 3 | 6.86 | 1,725 | 4h 19m |
| Birmingham BHM | 1.43 | 1.29 | 1,836 | 4h 20m |
| Indianapolis IND | 1.57 | 2.57 | 1,648 | 4h 24m |
| New Orleans MSY | 6.14 | 3.14 | 1,816 | 4h 25m |
With 7.1 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.
37 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is St Louis STL, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 5 times a day.
Through STL the routing covers 1,512 km against the 1,510 km nonstop track and takes about 4h 16m 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 50m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Memphis MEM at 4h 17m and Kansas City MCI at 4h 19m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Houston, Houston IAH is 38 km away by great circle and carries 197 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.
Plan Houston 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 HOU 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.
More pairs through HOU and MDW: Houston to Phoenix, San Diego to Houston, El Paso to Houston, Houston to Dallas, Houston to Indianapolis, Houston to Las Vegas, Birmingham to Houston, Tijuana to Houston.