# Taxi-in: why O'Hare takes 18 minutes and Midway takes 4

> Median taxi-in is 7 minutes nationally, 18 at O'Hare and 4 at Midway. What a year of flights shows about distance, the hour and the gate.

By Derek Johnson. Updated Nov 7, 2026. Source: https://skycapapp.com/articles/landing/taxi-in-ohare-vs-midway/

The median US flight takes 7 minutes from touchdown to the gate, and 1 flight in 10 takes more than 16. O'Hare's median is 18 and its 90th percentile is 36. Midway, 20 miles away, is 4 and 7. Those figures come from 12 months of public flight records: domestic flights by US carriers, Sep 2025 to Aug 2026.

This stretch is called taxi-in: wheels down to arrival at the gate. Trackers show you "landed", airlines show you the gate time, and nobody shows the gap, so passengers tend to learn it from the aisle.

| Airport | Median | 90th percentile |
|---|---|---|
| O'Hare | 18 | 36 |
| Dallas/Fort Worth | 13 | 21 |
| Charlotte | 11 | 21 |
| Seattle | 11 | 20 |
| LAX | 9 | 19 |
| JFK | 9 | 18 |
| Orlando | 9 | 18 |
| Houston Bush | 9 | 17 |
| Atlanta | 8 | 16 |
| Denver | 8 | 17 |
| Boston | 7 | 14 |
| San Francisco | 6 | 16 |
| Phoenix | 6 | 13 |
| Minneapolis | 5 | 11 |
| Reagan National | 5 | 15 |
| San Diego | 4 | 13 |
| Baltimore | 4 | 9 |
| Midway | 4 | 7 |

## Size is only part of it

O'Hare is big. Chicago's aviation department lists more than 7,200 acres, 8 active runways and 199 gates. Midway is about 775 acres with 43 gates.

But look at O'Hare by the hour. These are the medians for the local hour of landing.

| Hour of landing at O'Hare | Median | 90th percentile |
|---|---|---|
| 4 AM | 8 | 14 |
| 7 AM | 19 | 33 |
| 2 PM | 18 | 32 |
| 7 PM | 23 | 52 |
| 8 PM | 23 | 47 |
| 11 PM | 10 | 21 |

At 4 AM, O'Hare takes 8 minutes, which is about the national norm for a big airport. The same airfield takes 23 at 7 PM. The acres haven't changed. My read is that distance costs about 8 to 10 minutes there, and the remainder is waiting: for a gate, for a crossing, for the plane ahead. Night flights are few and may use the nearest runway, so treat that split as an inference and not a measurement.

Midway barely moves. Its median stays between 4 and 5 minutes all day. Its busiest hour is quicker than O'Hare's quietest.

The 90th percentile tells you more than the median here. At 7 PM, 1 flight in 10 spends more than 52 minutes getting to the gate. Across the year, 41.2% of O'Hare's flights took 20 minutes or more.

## The gate is part of the wait

Landing early doesn't always get you off early. About 13.5% of US flights land 30 or more minutes ahead of schedule, and at that point the gate may still have another plane on it. Across carriers at O'Hare, the chance of running at least 10 minutes over the norm goes from 15.3% for flights landing 0 to 15 minutes early to 22.5% for those landing 30 to 45 minutes early.

NASA's work on taxi prediction found the ramp, the last stretch by the gates, was the hard part to predict. That matches what you feel in the seat when the plane stops within sight of the terminal.

Carriers differ a little. At O'Hare, Southwest's median is 12 against United's 18, and Delta's is 17. At Midway, Southwest is 4 and Delta 6. The records don't show the terminal or the runway, so I can't separate the carrier from where it parks. I'd guess that's most of it.

O'Hare is also getting slower. Its July median rose from 13 minutes in 2023 to 19 in 2026. I don't have a cause I can source.

## What to do with this

If you land at O'Hare between 7 and 9 PM, add about 15 minutes to whatever you'd assume elsewhere, and more if someone's waiting. If you have [a connection or a car booked](/articles/landing/when-to-leave-to-pick-someone-up), count from the gate time and not from "landed".

A delay of 15 minutes on the ground isn't a sign of trouble. A captain's announcement about waiting for a gate is routine at these airports.

## Method and limits

Each flight's taxi-in comes from public flight records, 12 months to Aug 2026, without cancelled or diverted flights. Percentiles are nearest rank in whole minutes, by local hour of wheels-on. Hours with under 30 flights are dropped.

The records cover US carriers' domestic flights. They leave out foreign airlines and international arrivals. Regional flights appear under the operating carrier, so a Delta Connection flight flown by SkyWest is counted as SkyWest, and a few regional carriers don't report at all. New months arrive about 7 weeks late.

Taxi-in is one stage of many: see [how long from landing to the curb](/articles/landing/how-long-from-landing-to-curb) and [how long to get off the plane](/articles/landing/how-long-to-get-off-the-plane). The full tables are at [Taxi-in by airport, hour and carrier](/data/taxi-in). Why a tracker's "landed" and an airline's "arrived" differ is explained in [why the tracker and the airline disagree](/articles/overhead/why-tracker-and-airline-disagree).

> Skycap estimates your taxi from your airport, your airline and your hour of landing. It swaps in the real gate time when the plane parks, and your curb time tightens with it. [How at the curb works](/app/features#after)

## Sources

- [Chicago Department of Aviation, facility data](https://www.flychicago.com/business/CDA/factsfigures/Pages/facility.aspx)
- [NASA ATD-2, airport taxi-in machine learning services](https://aviationsystems.arc.nasa.gov/publications/atd2/tech-transfers/2_Phase_1_Knowledge_and_Technology_Artifacts/2.4-05%20ATD2_MLSvcs_AirportTaxiIn_v1.pdf)