The sector is held by Jet Linx Aviation, NetJets Aviation and Southwest Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
STL St Louis to MDW Chicago
St Louis Lambert, the United States, to Midway International, the United States. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 6.3 times a day
- Great circle
- 404 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 06m
- Door to door
- 7h 51m
What STL to MDW looks like
The STL to MDW sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
St Louis STL to Chicago MDW is a short sector of 404 km by great circle, flown nonstop 6.3 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 404 km, 720 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 06m.
St Louis STL is a large airport in the network held here, 108 scheduled destinations and 229.7 departures a day. Chicago MDW has 208 destinations and 305.1 departures a day.
St Louis 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 STL to MDW from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| STL to MDW | 6.29 | 44 | Jet Linx Aviation, NetJets Aviation, Southwest Airlines |
| MDW to STL | 6.14 | 43 | NetJets Aviation, Southwest Airlines |
3 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
At 6.3 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 87 departures a week on STL 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 06m block time on STL 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 STL | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At STL before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| STL to MDW in the air, estimated | 66 min | 5h 36m |
| Formalities at MDW | 90 min | 7h 06m |
| Delivery run in Chicago | 45 min | 7h 51m |
| Door to door | 471 min | 7h 51m |
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 STL to MDW is 7h 51m.
A courier who leaves St Louis at 09:00 local is on the ground in Chicago at about 10:06 local and at the door by 12:21 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Chicago, the last useful departure from St Louis is around 14:39 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. 36 of them join STL to MDW.
| Connecting at | STL to hub, flights a day | Hub to MDW, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Milwaukee MKE | 2.14 | 3.71 | 641 | 2h 56m |
| Kansas City MCI | 3 | 6.86 | 1,030 | 3h 31m |
| Detroit DTW | 6.14 | 6.14 | 1,074 | 3h 49m |
| Columbus CMH | 1.86 | 4.71 | 1,111 | 3h 53m |
| Omaha OMA | 3.43 | 4.71 | 1,228 | 4h 03m |
| Nashville BNA | 4.29 | 8 | 1,073 | 4h 05m |
With 6.3 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.
36 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 about twice a day.
Through MKE the routing covers 641 km against the 404 km nonstop track and takes about 2h 56m 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 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, Kansas City MCI at 3h 31m 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.
The two ends are only 404 km apart in a straight line. Allowing a road track a quarter longer than that and eighty kilometres an hour, a car covers it in about 6h 19m, so a courier who misses the flight drives rather than connects, and on a short deadline the road is often the plan from the start.
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 St Louis 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 STL 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 STL and MDW: 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.