Route reliability record
MCI→ORD
Kansas City to Chicago
- Flights
- 4,148
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 403 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 4,148 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 570 at 81.8% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 81.8% on time across 570 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,028 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
81.8% on time across 570 flights
These figures cover 4,148 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% 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 MCI to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 81.8% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 69.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 943 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 570 | 81.8% | 118 min | 1.58% | B |
| United Airlines | 1,434 | 76.5% | 82 min | 2.02% | B |
| Envoy Air | 819 | 73.8% | 74 min | 3.66% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 342 | 73.5% | 135 min | 2.92% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 943 | 69.5% | 112 min | 3.71% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 40 | 51.4% | 122 min | 7.50% | F− |
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 24 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am751 flights84.6%
- 8am–11am919 flights81.8%
- 11am–2pm759 flights77.9%
- 2pm–5pm833 flights68.2%
- 5pm–8pm777 flights60.9%
- 8pm–5am109 flights66.7%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.9% on time, against 84.6% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 919 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
December is the weak month at 65.0% on time, against 81.3% in February. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. May was the busiest month here, with 413 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.2%. 12 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 99,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% 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 99,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 99,358 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 84.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.80%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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. 11.2% 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 403 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 70.9% on time across 4,146 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,148 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 2.80% 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. 4,028 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCI to ORD questions
How often is MCI to ORD delayed?
About 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 25.3% of the 4,148 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 MCI to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 81.8% on time across 570 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 69.5%, a gap of 12 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 MCI to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.9%, 24 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 December delays on MCI to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 65.0% on time, compared with 81.3% in February. Across the year that is 16 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 MCI — the return legseparate record
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on-time record81.8%
- United Airlines on-time record76.5%
- Envoy Air on-time record73.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. MCI to ORD and ORD to MCI 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.