Route reliability record
ATL→ICT
Atlanta to Wichita
- Flights
- 1,147
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 782 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 1,147 ATL to ICT flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly ATL to ICT: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.5% of the time and Friday flights 91.6%, against 86.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 92 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,129 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.31%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
86.8% on time across 1,147 flights
These figures cover 1,147 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to ICT
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,147 | 86.8% | 54 min | 1.31% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on ATL to ICT
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,147 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am340 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm108 flights92.5%
- 2pm–5pm334 flights83.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am365 flights85.9%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 92.5% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 83.4%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 78.3% on time, against 91.9% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. August was the busiest month here, with 116 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 91.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.7%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 8,040 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 56%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 4,466 of the 8,040 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,040 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.31% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 782 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 87.9% on time across 1,147 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,147 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ICT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 91.9% on time and December 78.3%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,129 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to ICT questions
How often is ATL to ICT delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.2% of the 1,147 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is ATL to ICT compared with the rest of the country?
86.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ATL to ICT?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 92.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 83.4%, 9 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on ATL to ICT?
December is the weakest month at 78.3% on time, compared with 91.9% in September. Across the year that is 14 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- ICT to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- ATL to LGA, a related route73.4%
- DFW to ICT, a related route75.0%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.8%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. ATL to ICT and ICT to ATL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.