Route reliability record
ICT→DEN
Wichita to Denver
- Flights
- 2,190
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 420 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,190 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,260 at 80.8% on time.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.8% on time across 1,260 flights.
Key figures
On time
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,171 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.59%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
80.8% on time across 1,260 flights
These figures cover 2,190 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 ICT to DEN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 80.8% of the time; United Airlines manages 69.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 371 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,260 | 80.8% | 86 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 559 | 79.6% | 70 min | 0.54% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 371 | 69.4% | 38 min | 0.54% | C+ |
SkyWest leads United by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 59 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am678 flights92.9%
- 8am–11am394 flights70.7%
- 11am–2pm550 flights83.9%
- 2pm–5pm60 flights33.9%
- 5pm–8pm506 flights64.9%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 25% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.9% of the time, against 33.9% for the afternoon window. That is 59 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 678 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
August is the worst month at 70.7% on time, 16 points below February, the best at 86.3%. 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 226 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 76.0%. 5 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 33,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 12,000 minutes out of 33,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 32,689 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, 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
7.2% 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 a little over 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 78.0% on time across 2,194 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 2,190 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. February runs 86.3% on time and August 70.7%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,171 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ICT to DEN questions
How often is ICT to DEN delayed?
About 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 21.4% of the 2,190 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ICT to DEN?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 80.8% on time across 1,260 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 69.4%, a gap of 11 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 ICT to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.9% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 33.9%, 59 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 August delays on ICT to DEN?
August is the weakest month at 70.7% on time, compared with 86.3% in February. Across the year that is 16 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
- DEN to ICT — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.6%
- United Airlines on-time record69.4%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Do budget airlines really get delayed more? The numbers
Direction matters. ICT to DEN and DEN to ICT 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.