Carrier route record

WNPHX→ICT

Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Wichita

Flights: 166
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 22%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on PHX to ICT lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 40 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 166 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's PHX to ICT record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 52 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 163 completed flights

Avg delay

38 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.81%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.9%

Every carrier on PHX to ICT, 742 flights

These figures cover 166 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on PHX to ICT

Southwest flew 166 of the 742 flights on PHX to ICT, about 22% of it. Its 82.8% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 82.8% to SkyWest at 73.4%. Two 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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to ICT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	166	82.8%	38 min	1.81%	B
Envoy Airthin sample	286	79.5%	50 min	0.70%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	290	73.4%	62 min	0.69%	C+

Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 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–11am39 flights92.3%
11am–2pm61 flights83.1%
2pm–5pm62 flights80.3%
5pm–8pm4 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.3% of the time, against 80.3% for the afternoon window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 62 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on PHX to ICT through the year

Oct–Dec 202567 flights76.9%
Jan–Mar 202661 flights90.0%
Apr–Jun 202638 flights81.6%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 82.8% on time across 166 flights.

Southwest on PHX to ICT did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.9%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 55 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.8%. 5 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 1,075 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.

Carrier
54%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
National Airspace System
7%
Extreme weather
7%

The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, 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 580 of the 1,075 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,075 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.3% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.81% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 870 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 84.1% on time across 166 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 166 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.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on PHX to ICT

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 166 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 82.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 163 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures