Carrier route record

UAICT→ORD

United Airlines · Wichita to Chicago

Flights: 312
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 14%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on ICT to ORD lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 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 312 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 464 at 74.9% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, United's ICT to ORD record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 307 completed flights

Avg delay

92 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.28%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.4%

Every carrier on ICT to ORD, 2,225 flights

These figures cover 312 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on ICT to ORD

United flew 312 of the 2,225 flights on ICT to ORD, about 14% of it. Its 83.7% on time is 11 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.7% to Republic at 68.4%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on ICT to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)thin 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.

Flight by flight

United flight numbers on ICT to ORD

UA 78607:3083.6% · 310 flights

Departure window

When United runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 312 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's ICT to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 83.7% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

United on ICT to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202591 flights77.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights84.6%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights85.2%
Apr–Jun 202640 flights92.5%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 83.7% on time across 312 flights.

United on ICT to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 92.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 77.3%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 78 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 93.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.3%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 4,610 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.

Carrier
48%
National Airspace System
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
11%
Extreme weather
5%

37% 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 1,694 minutes out of 4,610, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,610 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 2,206 of the 4,610 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.28% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.2% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 60.8% on time across 311 flights, 23 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 23 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 312 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 United on ICT to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 312 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 83.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 307 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures