Carrier route record
UADEN→ICT
United Airlines · Denver to Wichita
- Flights
- 372
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DEN to ICT sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 372 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 United on DEN to ICT runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 44 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 370 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.0%
Every carrier on DEN to ICT, 2,194 flights
These figures cover 372 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% 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
United against every carrier on DEN to ICT
United flew 372 of the 2,194 flights on DEN to ICT, about 17% of it. Its 73.2% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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; 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 (this page) | 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
When United runs best on this route
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 372 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's DEN to ICT record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 73.2% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
United on DEN to ICT through the year
August is the worst month at 45.2% on time, 52 points below November, the best at 97.0%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 33 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 76.4% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 69.2%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 6,460 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%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
56% 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 6,460 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 6,460 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.0% 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.4% on time across 371 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 372 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 United on DEN to ICT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 372 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 73.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 370 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to ICT, every carrier
- United on ICT to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to ICT86.4%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to ICT62.0%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.