Carrier route record
OOORD→ICT
SkyWest Airlines · Chicago to Wichita
- Flights
- 1,369
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 62%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ORD to ICT 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 1,369 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ORD to ICT runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,330 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
65.7%
Every carrier on ORD to ICT, 2,221 flights
These figures cover 1,369 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% 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
SkyWest against every carrier on ORD to ICT
SkyWest flew 1,369 of the 2,221 flights on ORD to ICT, most of the route. Its 66.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 65.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 80.0% to PSA at 56.0%. Three 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 21 | 80.0% | 63 min | 4.76% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 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− |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on ORD to ICT
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
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–11am646 flights69.4%
- 11am–2pm265 flights73.5%
- 2pm–5pm233 flights56.9%
- 5pm–8pm65 flights59.0%
- 8pm–5am160 flights60.1%
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 73.5% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 56.9%. 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 646 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ORD to ICT through the year
December is the weak month at 50.6% on time, against 76.5% 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 187 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 61.9%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 34,000 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Extreme weather
- 14%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 3.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 34,431 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 15,000 of the 34,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.37%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.8% 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 runs 68.8% on time across 1,374 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,369 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 SkyWest on ORD to ICT
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 76.5% on time and December 50.6%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,330 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to ICT, every carrier
- SkyWest on ICT to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to ICT66.7%
- United Airlines on ORD to ICT60.8%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.