Carrier route record

OOICT→DEN

SkyWest Airlines · Wichita to Denver

Flights: 1,260
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 58%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on ICT to DEN lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,260 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 559 at 79.6% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on ICT to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,247 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.63%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.6%

Every carrier on ICT to DEN, 2,190 flights

These figures cover 1,260 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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

SkyWest against every carrier on ICT to DEN

SkyWest flew 1,260 of the 2,190 flights on ICT to DEN, most of the route. Its 80.8% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 80.8% to United at 69.4%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 79.6% 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.

On-time performance by carrier on ICT to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	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+

Southwest leads United by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on ICT to DEN

OO 535506:0591.6% · 349 flights

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 25 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am349 flights91.6%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm506 flights84.7%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm405 flights66.5%
8pm–5am—

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 91.6% of the time, against 66.5% for the evening window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 506 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on ICT to DEN through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, August worst

August is the worst month at 71.2% on time, 16 points below May, the best at 86.8%. 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 136 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.4% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 77.8%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

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 20,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
33%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
National Airspace System
24%
Extreme weather
10%

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 91.6% on time here. The split is drawn from 20,473 reported delay minutes.

No single cause dominates. carrier at 33%, late-arriving aircraft at 33% and national airspace system at 24% split the 20,000 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.

Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, 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

8.0% 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 last an hour and a half, 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.4% on time across 1,263 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,260 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 SkyWest on ICT to DEN

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 86.8% on time and August 71.2%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,247 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures