Route reliability record
ORD→MCI
Chicago to Kansas City
- Flights
- 4,283
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 403 mi
- Carriers
- 6
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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,283 ORD to MCI flights, of which Republic Airways flew 561 at 78.9% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to MCI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 75.9%, against 70.9% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 78.9% on time across 561 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,165 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.61%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
78.9% on time across 561 flights
These figures cover 4,283 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 MCI
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 78.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,222 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 561 | 78.9% | 63 min | 1.78% | B |
| Envoy Air | 723 | 74.2% | 63 min | 3.46% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,504 | 71.2% | 75 min | 1.60% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,222 | 67.0% | 85 min | 4.09% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 233 | 61.0% | 85 min | 0.86% | D+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 40 | 59.0% | 56 min | 2.50% | D |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.1% 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 MCI
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 Kansas City
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → MCIChicago to Kansas City | Republic Airways | 77.5% | 78.9% | 1.78% | 2pm–5pm, Thu | — |
| 2. MDW → MCIChicago to Kansas City | Southwest Airlines | 76.9% | 78.0% | 1.38% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. ORD → MCIChicago to Kansas City | Envoy Air | 71.6% | 74.2% | 3.46% | 11am–2pm, Sun | — |
| 4. ORD → MCIChicago to Kansas City | United Airlines | 70.1% | 71.2% | 1.60% | 8am–11am, Mon | UA 561 12:40 |
| 5. ORD → MCIChicago to Kansas City | SkyWest Airlines | 64.3% | 67.0% | 4.09% | 5am–8am, 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 20 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am473 flights80.5%
- 8am–11am787 flights79.8%
- 11am–2pm713 flights77.0%
- 2pm–5pm922 flights69.2%
- 5pm–8pm587 flights60.1%
- 8pm–5am801 flights60.4%
Scale runs 50% to 85%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.1% on time, against 80.5% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 922 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to MCI 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 MCI, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 80.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 60.1%, a wide gap of 20.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am80.5%
- 8–11am79.8%
- 11am–2pm77.0%
- 2–5pm69.2%
- 5–8pm60.1%
- 8pm–5am60.4%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 61.6% on time, against 81.3% in September. 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 410 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.1%, a spread of 11 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 92,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 91,988 reported delay minutes.
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 92,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 2.61%, 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
11.5% 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.
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 74.6% on time across 4,280 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,283 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 MCI 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. September runs 81.3% on time and December 61.6%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 4,165 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to MCI questions
How often is ORD to MCI delayed?
Roughly 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 29.1% of the 4,283 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 MCI?
Republic Airways leads at 78.9% on time across 561 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 67.0%, 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 ORD to MCI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 80.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.1%, 20 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 MCI?
December is the weakest month at 61.6% on time, compared with 81.3% in September. Across the year that is 20 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 ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on ORD to MCI78.9%
- Envoy Air on ORD to MCI74.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to MCI71.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MCI67.0%
- American Airlines on ORD to MCI61.0%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DEN to MCI, a related route76.5%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record78.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record74.2%
- United Airlines on-time record71.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. ORD to MCI and MCI 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.