Route reliability record
ICT→DFW
Wichita to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 2,469
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 328 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B−, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrive 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 2,469 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,239 at 80.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.1% on time across 1,239 flights.
Key figures
On time
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,383 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
80.1% on time across 1,239 flights
These figures cover 2,469 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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
Which airline is most reliable on ICT to DFW
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 80.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 66.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 404 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 45 | 84.4% | 149 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Air | 1,239 | 80.1% | 77 min | 3.07% | B− |
| PSA Airlines | 781 | 79.9% | 117 min | 3.20% | B− |
| American Airlines | 404 | 66.7% | 112 min | 3.96% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 4.0% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after 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 19 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am548 flights85.9%
- 8am–11am541 flights84.0%
- 11am–2pm363 flights80.6%
- 2pm–5pm450 flights70.8%
- 5pm–8pm394 flights66.6%
- 8pm–5am173 flights73.1%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.9% of the time, against 66.6% for the evening window. That is 19 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 548 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
June is the worst month at 65.6% on time, 24 points below February, the best at 90.0%. 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 245 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.9%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 52,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
49% 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 52,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 51,553 reported delay minutes.
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 85.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.20%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.6% 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 328 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 75.0% on time across 2,466 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,469 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 delay figures matter less here than the 3.20% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,383 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ICT to DFW questions
How often is ICT to DFW delayed?
Roughly 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 22.0% of the 2,469 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ICT to DFW?
Envoy Air leads at 80.1% on time across 1,239 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 66.7%, a gap of 13 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 DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 66.6%, 19 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 June delays on ICT to DFW?
June is the weakest month at 65.6% on time, compared with 90.0% in February. Across the year that is 24 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
- DFW to ICT — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record80.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record79.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. ICT to DFW and DFW 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.