Carrier route record
WNDEN→ICT
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Wichita
- Flights
- 559
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on DEN to ICT draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 559 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,300 at 85.3% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on DEN to ICT runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 158 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 553 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.72%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.7%
Every carrier on DEN to ICT, 2,231 flights
These figures cover 559 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on DEN to ICT
Southwest flew 559 of the 2,231 flights on DEN to ICT, about 25% of it. Its 61.5% on time is 16 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.3% to Southwest at 61.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 85.3% of the time; United Airlines manages 75.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 372 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,300 | 85.3% | 65 min | 0.69% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 372 | 75.6% | 65 min | 0.54% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 559 | 61.5% | 60 min | 0.72% | D+ |
SkyWest leads United by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 36 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am56 flights85.5%
- 11am–2pm141 flights73.8%
- 2pm–5pm45 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm181 flights50.8%
- 8pm–5am136 flights49.3%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 49.3% on time, against 85.5% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 181 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to ICT through the year
April is the best month on the calendar at 76.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 68.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 54.9%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on DEN to ICT runs when it is late
The 213 late arrivals split 66 under half an hour, 69 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 78 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early37 flights6.7%
- Within 15 min303 flights54.8%
- 15–29 min late66 flights11.9%
- 30–59 min late69 flights12.5%
- 1–2 hours late58 flights10.5%
- 2+ hours late20 flights3.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 553 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
51 of 248 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 16 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on DEN to ICT
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 March 2026, 5 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 March 2026 | 5 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 August 2026 | 5 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 June 2026 | 4 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 August 2026 | 4 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 June 2026 | 4 hours 9 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
55% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 to one. The split is drawn from 12,864 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.72%, below the national 1.89% 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 costs
14.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.6% on time across 559 flights, 20 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 20 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 559 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on DEN to ICT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 559 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 61.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 553 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to ICT, every carrier
- Southwest on ICT to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to ICT85.3%
- United Airlines on DEN to ICT75.6%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.