Route reliability record
DEN→ICT
Denver to Wichita
- Flights
- 2,194
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 420 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,194 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,263 at 86.4% on time.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 86.4% on time across 1,263 flights.
Key figures
On time
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,173 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.4% on time across 1,263 flights
These figures cover 2,194 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to ICT
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 86.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 62.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 559 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,263 | 86.4% | 62 min | 0.63% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 372 | 73.2% | 65 min | 0.27% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 559 | 62.0% | 63 min | 1.07% | D |
The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 24 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 24 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against 24 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am138 flights92.0%
- 8am–11am450 flights89.9%
- 11am–2pm183 flights76.8%
- 2pm–5pm377 flights82.9%
- 5pm–8pm528 flights68.0%
- 8pm–5am518 flights70.9%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.0% of the time, against 68.0% for the evening window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 528 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
July is the worst month at 67.3% on time, 21 points below January, the best at 88.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 227 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 74.8%. 8 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 30,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 30,251 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 420 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 78.6% on time across 2,190 flights, within half 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 2,194 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 88.1% on time and July 67.3%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,173 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to ICT questions
How often is DEN to ICT delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.0% of the 2,194 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to ICT?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 86.4% on time across 1,263 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 62.0%, a gap of 24 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to ICT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 68.0%, 24 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 July delays on DEN to ICT?
July is the weakest month at 67.3% on time, compared with 88.1% in January. Across the year that is 21 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 DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.4%
- United Airlines on-time record73.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record62.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DEN to ICT and ICT to DEN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.