Route reliability record
ORD→ICT
Chicago to Wichita
- Flights
- 2,187
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 588 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives 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 2,187 ORD to ICT flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,247 at 67.7% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to ICT: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 75.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 75.0%, against 66.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 106 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,126 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.51%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
67.7% on time across 1,247 flights
These figures cover 2,187 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to ICT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points 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 | 1,247 | 67.7% | 78 min | 2.17% | C |
| Envoy Air | 553 | 66.2% | 67 min | 3.07% | C− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 312 | 64.3% | 84 min | 1.92% | D |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 54 | 56.0% | 79 min | 7.41% | D− |
Envoy Air cancels 3.1% 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
Flights on ORD to ICT
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Wichita
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → ICTChicago to Wichita | SkyWest Airlines | 66.2% | 67.7% | 2.17% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OO 4809 08:52 |
| 2. ORD → ICTChicago to Wichita | Envoy Air | 64.2% | 66.2% | 3.07% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 13 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am780 flights68.7%
- 11am–2pm304 flights75.7%
- 2pm–5pm304 flights62.3%
- 5pm–8pm205 flights62.6%
- 8pm–5am594 flights62.8%
Scale runs 55% 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 62.3%. 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 780 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to ICT by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ORD to ICT, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 75.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 62.3%, a wide gap of 13.4 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am68.7%
- 11am–2pm75.7%
- 2–5pm62.3%
- 5–8pm62.6%
- 8pm–5am62.8%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 75.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.0%, a spread of 16 points.
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 54,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 54,039 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 54,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 2.51%, against 1.89% 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
14.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.2% on time across 2,191 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,187 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ICT after this flight
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. 2,126 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 33.3% of the 2,187 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 67.7% on time across 1,247 flights. Envoy Air is at the other end on 66.2%, a gap of 2 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 ORD to ICT?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 75.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 62.3%, 13 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
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to ICT67.7%
- Envoy Air on ORD to ICT66.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to ICT64.3%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DFW to ICT, a related route76.5%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record80.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record67.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record66.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.