Carrier route record
WNDEN→ICT
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Wichita
- Flights
- 559
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 1,263 at 86.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on DEN to ICT runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 156 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 550 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.07%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.0%
Every carrier on DEN to ICT, 2,194 flights
These figures cover 559 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.3% 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
Southwest against every carrier on DEN to ICT
Southwest flew 559 of the 2,194 flights on DEN to ICT, about 25% of it. Its 62.0% on time is 16 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 86.4% to Southwest at 62.0%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 86.4% of the time; United Airlines manages 73.2%. 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 | 1,263 | 86.4% | 62 min | 0.63% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 372 | 73.2% | 65 min | 0.27% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 559 | 62.0% | 63 min | 1.07% | D |
The spread between SkyWest and United is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 39 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am88 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm98 flights71.4%
- 2pm–5pm56 flights70.9%
- 5pm–8pm164 flights56.9%
- 8pm–5am153 flights45.3%
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 45.3% on time, against 83.9% 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 164 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 73.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 51.2%. 23 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 13,000 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
59% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 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 13,223 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 83.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.07% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.54%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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 79.6% on time across 559 flights, 18 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 18 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 62.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 550 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 ICT86.4%
- United Airlines on DEN to ICT73.2%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.