Terminal MAIN hosts 6 airlines across 43 gates. It's Southwest Airlines's home turf at MDW.
Main Terminal layout and airlines
All 43 gates at Midway sit off one Main Terminal atrium, which then splits into Concourses A, B, and C. Southwest dominates the boards here, with Delta, Allegiant, Frontier, Porter, and Volaris filling out the rest of the schedule. Everything is technically in one building, so you can walk from A to C in roughly 10–15 minutes if your stride is decent. That compact footprint is the upside; the downside is that everyone funnels through the same choke points.
Security bottlenecks and timing
The primary TSA checkpoint for the Main Terminal feeds all three concourses and is where most complaints start. Skytrax reviews call out “beyond rude” staff at both standard and PreCheck lanes, and The Points Guy piece flags Midway as fragile when delays stack up. Regulars aim for a 90-minute buffer for domestic flights here, even though the airport size might tempt you toward 45 minutes. Add another 15–20 minutes during Monday morning or Sunday evening rush periods, when Southwest banks departures tightly.
Food situation: plan ahead, especially at night
Several 2022–2023 Skytrax reviews describe walking through the Main Terminal after 9–10 p.m. and finding nearly every food vendor closed. People end up at vending machines in the atrium or concourse heads, and those same reviews say the machines frequently error out or sit empty. Morning isn’t much better: early flyers mention finding only one or two coffee stands open before 5:30 a.m. Treat MDW as backup food after you eat downtown, not the other way around, particularly for late-night Southwest departures.
Shops and services: basic and scattered
The Main Terminal runs on a no-frills model, which The Points Guy calls out directly when ranking Midway near the bottom nationally. Expect standard convenience kiosks and small newsstands near the atrium and down each concourse, plus the usual ATM clusters and basic service counters. You won’t find branded airline lounges here; Southwest, Delta, Allegiant, Frontier, Porter, and Volaris all operate without dedicated club space. If you want a quiet corner to work, most people drift to the far ends of Concourses A and C, where foot traffic thins after the main departure banks.
Connections and walking times
Because everything runs off the single Main Terminal, gate-to-gate transfers are short compared with a place like ORD. A-to-B or B-to-C walks usually sit in the 5–12 minute range, even with light congestion in the atrium. That compact setup tempts some frequent Southwest flyers to book 40–45 minute turns, especially on same-airline itineraries within the Main concourses. The risk is that any delay at the shared security or a ground hold hits the whole building at once, so missed connections spike quickly when weather rolls through.
What regulars actually do
Flyers posting on Skytrax and in the 2023 The Points Guy feature say they pad their Midway schedule by at least 30 minutes compared with other mid-size airports. Locals often eat in the Loop or near the CTA Orange Line before heading to the Main Terminal, then treat airport food as a backup if something happens to be open. People who have been burned by dead vending machines now toss protein bars or snacks into their carry-on, especially for flights after 8 p.m. That small prep step beats paying for an overpriced snack box on a 90-minute hop to Atlanta or Denver.
Watch out for and one last tip
Big complaints center on the Main Terminal security tone and the “everything closed” feeling after certain hours, with multiple passengers saying one bad TSA interaction soured their whole trip. If you hit the building at a peak time, lines can loop back into the public check-in hall, even though there are only 43 gates total. One practical move: pre-print or mobile-check your boarding pass for Southwest or Delta, then head straight to security and clear the bottleneck before you start hunting for coffee or a bathroom break.