Route reliability record
MIA→MCI
Miami to Kansas City
- Flights
- 801
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,251 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 801 MIA to MCI flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly MIA to MCI: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.1%, against 72.8% for the route overall.
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 48 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 788 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
71.0% on time across 460 flights
These figures cover 801 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 MIA to MCI
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 5 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 154 | 88.8% | 42 min | 1.30% | A |
| American Airlines | 460 | 71.0% | 73 min | 1.52% | C |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 182 | 63.2% | 72 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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 27 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–8am—
- 8am–11am104 flights94.2%
- 11am–2pm71 flights67.6%
- 2pm–5pm215 flights72.4%
- 5pm–8pm30 flights—
- 8pm–5am381 flights69.2%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 67.6% on time against 94.2% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 381 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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.
August is the worst month at 48.6% on time, 32 points below December, the best at 80.9%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 112 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.8%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 15,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 15,014 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 6,118 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.50%.
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. 9.9% 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 1,251 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 83.2% on time across 801 flights, 10 points above 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 801 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MCI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 801 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 72.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 788 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MIA to MCI questions
How often is MIA to MCI delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.2% of the 801 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is MIA to MCI compared with the rest of the country?
72.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MIA to MCI?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 94.2% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 67.6%, 27 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 August delays on MIA to MCI?
August is the weakest month at 48.6% on time, compared with 80.9% in December. Across the year that is 32 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
- MCI to MIA — the return legseparate record
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on MIA to MCI88.8%
- American Airlines on MIA to MCI71.0%
- Southwest Airlines on MIA to MCI63.2%
- MIA to ATL, a related route73.7%
- DEN to MCI, a related route75.5%
- MIA to LGA, a related route68.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record100.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record88.8%
- American Airlines on-time record71.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MIA to MCI and MCI to MIA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.