Carrier route record
WNICT→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Wichita to Denver
- Flights
- 559
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on ICT to DEN lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 559 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,297 at 80.4% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's ICT to DEN record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 555 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.36%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.7%
Every carrier on ICT to DEN, 2,227 flights
These figures cover 559 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on ICT to DEN
Southwest flew 559 of the 2,227 flights on ICT to DEN, about 25% of it. Its 81.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 81.6% to United at 68.6%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 80.4% of the time; United Airlines manages 68.6%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 559 | 81.6% | 62 min | 0.36% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,297 | 80.4% | 82 min | 0.62% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 371 | 68.6% | 46 min | 0.54% | C+ |
SkyWest leads United by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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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 41 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am327 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am28 flights—
- 11am–2pm22 flights—
- 2pm–5pm57 flights64.9%
- 5pm–8pm125 flights52.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.8% on time, against 94.2% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 327 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, Friday is the strongest day at 87.8% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 75.3%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on ICT to DEN runs when it is late
The 102 late arrivals split 38 under half an hour, 27 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early129 flights23.2%
- Within 15 min324 flights58.4%
- 15–29 min late38 flights6.8%
- 30–59 min late27 flights4.9%
- 1–2 hours late28 flights5.0%
- 2+ hours late9 flights1.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 555 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 93 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 7 made it up before arrival. 16 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on ICT to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 June 2026, 6 hours 8 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 June 2026 | 6 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 December 2025 | 4 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 May 2026 | 3 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 April 2026 | 3 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 December 2025 | 2 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Southwest 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 6,268 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 33%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
40% 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 2,496 minutes out of 6,268, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,268 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.36%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 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 61.5% on time across 559 flights, 20 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 20 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 81.6% 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 DEN80.4%
- United Airlines on ICT to DEN68.6%
- 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 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.