Route reliability record
ICT→ORD
Wichita to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,225
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 588 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,225 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 464 at 74.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 52 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,138 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
74.9% on time across 464 flights
These figures cover 2,225 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% 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 ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 74.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 68.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,374 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 312 | 83.7% | 92 min | 1.28% | B |
| Envoy Air | 464 | 74.9% | 72 min | 3.45% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 54 | 73.5% | 133 min | 9.26% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,374 | 68.8% | 94 min | 3.71% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 21 | 68.4% | 59 min | 9.52% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.7% 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 21 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am700 flights79.8%
- 8am–11am27 flights—
- 11am–2pm748 flights71.1%
- 2pm–5pm320 flights74.1%
- 5pm–8pm430 flights59.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.0% on time, against 79.8% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 748 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
July is the worst month at 65.0% on time, 20 points below February, the best at 85.2%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 260 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 61.8%. 16 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 53,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 53,134 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 18,000 of the 53,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.51%, 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. 12.1% 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.
The 588 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.7% on time across 2,221 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,225 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 3.51% 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. 2,138 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ICT to ORD questions
How often is ICT to ORD delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.6% of the 2,225 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 ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 74.9% on time across 464 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 68.8%, a gap of 6 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 ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 79.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.0%, 21 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 July delays on ICT to ORD?
July is the weakest month at 65.0% on time, compared with 85.2% in February. Across the year that is 20 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
- ORD to ICT — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record83.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record74.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record73.5%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. ICT to ORD and ORD 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.