Route reliability record
ORD→ICT
Chicago to Wichita
- Flights
- 2,221
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 588 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 2,221 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,369 at 66.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 119 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,156 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
66.7% on time across 1,369 flights
These figures cover 2,221 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% 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 ORD to ICT
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 21 | 80.0% | 63 min | 4.76% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,369 | 66.7% | 78 min | 2.48% | C |
| Envoy Air | 466 | 66.7% | 70 min | 3.22% | C− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 311 | 60.8% | 89 min | 1.29% | D |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 54 | 56.0% | 79 min | 7.41% | D− |
Envoy Air cancels 3.2% 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 17 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–11am785 flights68.8%
- 11am–2pm319 flights75.7%
- 2pm–5pm328 flights59.0%
- 5pm–8pm206 flights62.4%
- 8pm–5am583 flights60.7%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 75.7% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 59.0%. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 785 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 49.4% on time, against 77.2% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 259 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.2%. 13 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 58,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Extreme weather
- 15%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 57,583 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 20,000 of the 58,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.61%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 15.2% 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.
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 72.4% on time across 2,225 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,221 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 77.2% on time and December 49.4%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,156 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to ICT questions
How often is ORD to ICT delayed?
About one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 34.3% of the 2,221 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to ICT?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 66.7% on time across 1,369 flights. Envoy Air is at the other end on 66.7%, a gap of half a point. 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 ORD to ICT?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 75.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 59.0%, 17 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 ORD to ICT?
December is the weakest month at 49.4% on time, compared with 77.2% in February. Across the year that is 28 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
- ICT to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on-time record80.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record66.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record66.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. ORD to ICT and ICT to ORD 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.