Carrier route record
OOICT→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Wichita to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,374
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 62%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ICT to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.7% 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 1,374 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ICT to ORD runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 88 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,316 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.71%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.4%
Every carrier on ICT to ORD, 2,225 flights
These figures cover 1,374 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% 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 ORD
SkyWest flew 1,374 of the 2,225 flights on ICT to ORD, most of the route. Its 68.8% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.7% to Republic at 68.4%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| 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 (this page) | 1,374 | 68.8% | 94 min | 3.71% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 21 | 68.4% | 59 min | 9.52% | C− |
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 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am200 flights74.5%
- 8am–11am2 flights—
- 11am–2pm612 flights71.4%
- 2pm–5pm265 flights72.5%
- 5pm–8pm295 flights55.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.8% on time, against 74.5% 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 612 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ICT to ORD through the year
June is the worst month at 61.2% on time, 23 points below February, the best at 84.3%. 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 188 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 57.6%. 20 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 38,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 17%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 38,364 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 14,000 of the 38,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.71%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.5% 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 runs 66.7% on time across 1,369 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,374 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 ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.71% 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. 1,316 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ICT to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to ICT, the return leg
- United Airlines on ICT to ORD83.7%
- Envoy Air on ICT to ORD74.9%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.