Route profile
MCI→ORD
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Kansas City to Chicago, 403 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 28% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,959 flights. How this is calculated
MCI → ORD arrives on time 79.2% of the time; the return trip, ORD → MCI, arrives on time 74.3% of the time, a 4.9-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
MCI → ORD spends 36.2 minutes on the ground on a 403-mile trip: 18.6 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at MCI and 17.6 minutes from touchdown to gate at ORD.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why MCI → ORD flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
MCI → ORD cancelled 221 of 10,959 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 50. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 71.0% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 70 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 221 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
157 cancellations, 71.0% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
38 cancellations, 17.2% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
26 cancellations, 11.8% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
221 coded cancellations were recorded on MCI → ORD; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
48 min late
against a median of 6 min early
Percentiles over 10,959 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at ORD after arriving from MCI.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 37% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 20% | High risk |
| 60 min | 14% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 8.5% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 6.0% | Some risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 2.02% of the time and diverts 0.16% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 10,721 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 48 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,959 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
MCI → ORD flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 86.5% of the time, against 68.4% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 18.1 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 86.9% on time from 709 flights
- 6 AM: 87.5% on time from 1,019 flights
- 7 AM: 84.9% on time from 903 flights
- 8 AM: 86.8% on time from 851 flights
- 9 AM: 84.6% on time from 602 flights
- 10 AM: 88.7% on time from 644 flights
- 11 AM: 82.7% on time from 1,199 flights
- 12 PM: 75.7% on time from 377 flights
- 1 PM: 77.9% on time from 401 flights
- 2 PM: too few flights to score
- 3 PM: 76.7% on time from 1,369 flights
- 4 PM: 66.5% on time from 499 flights
- 5 PM: 63.8% on time from 575 flights
- 6 PM: 70.7% on time from 1,363 flights
- 7 PM: 58.6% on time from 352 flights
- 8 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why MCI → ORD runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for MCI → ORD. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on MCI → ORD, at 37.9%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 86.5% of the time and 6–9 PM departures 68.4%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is ORD, where the flight lands. Its figure counts departures from ORD, so it says more about how that airport copes than about this route. Bad weather cancels 5.5 times the normal rate at ORD against 2.5 times at MCI. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: MCI 3.0% against 1.2%, ORD 6.5% against 1.2%. Flights that did leave ORD in bad weather arrived on time 55.7% of the time, against 77.1% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | MCI | ORD |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 3.0% | 6.5% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.2% | 1.2% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 74.7% | 55.7% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 81.9% | 77.1% |
| Departures in bad weather | 16,876 | 104,455 |
SkyWest Airlines (5.9% cancelled against 3.6% for the other carriers at MCI) cancelled more departures from MCI in bad weather than the other carriers there did in the same months. None of the route’s other carriers was clearly better. One more carrier flies this route but has too few bad-weather departures from MCI to compare.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at MCI
All departures from MCI| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,232 | 2.8%about level | 2.8% |
| American Airlines | 1,860 | 3.3%about level | 3.0% |
| Republic Airways | 554 | 4.7%about level | 3.4% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 597 | 5.9%above the others | 3.6% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from MCI and ORD, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from MCI on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: MCI (airlines), ORD, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 4,292 | 81.0% | 1.56% | -4 min | 7.2% |
| Envoy Air | 1,958 | 77.1% | 2.66% | -7 min | 8.6% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,732 | 75.0% | 2.66% | -6 min | 12.2% |
| American Airlines | 1,601 | 77.4% | 1.56% | -6 min | 10.4% |
| Republic Airways | 1,336 | 84.7% | 2.10% | -10 min | 5.6% |
United Airlines flew 39.3% of the 10,919 flights listed. SkyWest Airlines cancelled 2.66% of its flights here against 1.56% for United Airlines.
Republic Airways arrived on time 9.7 percentage points more often than SkyWest Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
| Flight | Scheduled | Operations | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| UA303 United Airlines | 8:00 AM | 1,124 | 81.2% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Wednesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 6.0 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 74.0%
- Feb: 82.6%
- Mar: 79.2%
- Apr: 80.7%
- May: 80.8%
- Jun: 75.9%
- Jul: 72.0%
- Aug: 78.1%
- Sep: 83.4%
- Oct: 83.6%
- Nov: 83.6%
- Dec: 79.3%
July is historically the weakest month and October the strongest, a spread of 11.6 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 66.7% from 253 flights
- August 2023: 79.3% from 276 flights
- September 2023: 79.5% from 257 flights
- October 2023: 87.6% from 201 flights
- November 2023: 85.6% from 188 flights
- December 2023: 90.6% from 202 flights
- January 2024: 63.6% from 235 flights
- February 2024: 88.2% from 211 flights
- March 2024: 90.4% from 188 flights
- April 2024: 87.2% from 251 flights
- May 2024: 76.3% from 297 flights
- June 2024: 77.9% from 300 flights
- July 2024: 75.0% from 301 flights
- August 2024: 77.0% from 283 flights
- September 2024: 91.9% from 272 flights
- October 2024: 90.4% from 323 flights
- November 2024: 91.0% from 302 flights
- December 2024: 87.5% from 257 flights
- January 2025: 86.0% from 261 flights
- February 2025: 79.5% from 246 flights
- March 2025: 79.1% from 283 flights
- April 2025: 84.5% from 330 flights
- May 2025: 86.0% from 358 flights
- June 2025: 73.4% from 345 flights
- July 2025: 65.6% from 342 flights
- August 2025: 78.2% from 313 flights
- September 2025: 78.9% from 301 flights
- October 2025: 75.1% from 349 flights
- November 2025: 75.7% from 348 flights
- December 2025: 65.0% from 312 flights
- January 2026: 71.7% from 278 flights
- February 2026: 81.3% from 334 flights
- March 2026: 73.1% from 377 flights
- April 2026: 73.3% from 406 flights
- May 2026: 79.4% from 413 flights
- June 2026: 76.6% from 375 flights
- July 2026: 78.6% from 391 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 75.7% against 82.4% in the 12 months before — declining by 6.7 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,959 MCI → ORD flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed