Carrier route record

WNICT→PHX

Southwest Airlines · Wichita to Phoenix

Flights: 166
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 22%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on ICT to PHX earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 45 minutes. That rests on 166 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's ICT to PHX record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 65 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 164 completed flights

Avg delay

46 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.20%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.9%

Every carrier on ICT to PHX, 739 flights

These figures cover 166 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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

Southwest against every carrier on ICT to PHX

Southwest flew 166 of the 739 flights on ICT to PHX, about 22% of it. Its 84.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 86.2% to SkyWest at 84.0%. Two 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.

On-time performance by carrier on ICT to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	284	86.2%	54 min	0.70%	A+
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	166	84.1%	46 min	1.20%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	289	84.0%	94 min	0.35%	B+

Departure window

When Southwest 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 166 flights.

5am–8am5 flights—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm110 flights85.3%
2pm–5pm43 flights76.2%
5pm–8pm8 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 85.3% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 76.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 110 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on ICT to PHX through the year

Oct–Dec 202567 flights83.6%
Jan–Mar 202661 flights86.7%
Apr–Jun 202638 flights81.1%

Scale runs 75% to 90%. 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 84.1% on time across 166 flights.

Quarter by quarter Southwest on ICT to PHX held fairly steady: 83.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 86.7% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 81.1% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.8%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 69% of the 1,196 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
69%
National Airspace System
20%
Carrier
10%
Extreme weather
1%

69% 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 1,196 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 55 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 1,196 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 870 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 82.8% on time across 166 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 166 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 PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 166 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 84.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 164 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