Carrier route record
WNICT→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Wichita to Denver
- Flights
- 559
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on ICT to DEN lands a B+, 2 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 559 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,260 at 80.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on ICT to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 555 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.6%
Every carrier on ICT to DEN, 2,190 flights
These figures cover 559 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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
Southwest against every carrier on ICT to DEN
Southwest flew 559 of the 2,190 flights on ICT to DEN, about 26% of it. Its 79.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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. 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 (this page) | 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
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 60 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am326 flights94.1%
- 8am–11am29 flights—
- 11am–2pm44 flights74.4%
- 2pm–5pm60 flights33.9%
- 5pm–8pm100 flights58.0%
- 8pm–5am—
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 94.1% of the time, against 33.9% for the afternoon window. That is 60 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 326 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on ICT to DEN through the year
June is the worst month at 65.0% on time, 35 points below October, the best at 100.0%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 85.5% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 75.6%. 10 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. National Airspace System accounts for 56% of the 7,948 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%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
56% 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 4,439 minutes out of 7,948, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,948 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.54%, 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
7.6% 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 a little over an hour, 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 62.0% on time across 559 flights, 18 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 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 ICT to DEN
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 79.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 555 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ICT to DEN, every carrier
- Southwest on DEN to ICT, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on ICT to DEN80.8%
- United Airlines on ICT to DEN69.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.