Carrier route record

WNABQ→DEN

Southwest Airlines · Albuquerque to Denver

Flights: 1,463
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 45%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on ABQ to DEN lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,463 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 908 at 86.2% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Southwest on ABQ to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,453 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.48%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

82.3%

Every carrier on ABQ to DEN, 3,216 flights

These figures cover 1,463 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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.

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Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on ABQ to DEN

Southwest flew 1,463 of the 3,216 flights on ABQ to DEN, about 45% of it. Its 79.6% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 86.2% to Southwest at 79.6%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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.

On-time performance by carrier on ABQ to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	908	86.2%	81 min	0.55%	A+
United Airlines	845	83.0%	78 min	0.83%	B+
Southwest Airlines (this page)	1,463	79.6%	58 min	0.48%	B+

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 86.2%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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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 33 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am388 flights96.1%
8am–11am271 flights84.4%
11am–2pm181 flights86.2%
2pm–5pm320 flights63.2%
5pm–8pm264 flights65.8%
8pm–5am39 flights78.9%

Scale runs 55% to 100%.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.1% of the time, against 63.2% for the afternoon window. That is 33 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 388 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on ABQ to DEN through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.November best, August worst

August is the worst month at 61.8% on time, 26 points below November, the best at 87.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 141 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.9%, a spread of 11 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Southwest on ABQ to DEN runs when it is late

The 297 late arrivals split 108 under half an hour, 108 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 81 an hour or more.

15+ min early281 flights19.3%
Within 15 min875 flights60.2%
15–29 min late108 flights7.4%
30–59 min late108 flights7.4%
1–2 hours late45 flights3.1%
2+ hours late36 flights2.5%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 1,453 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

105 of 365 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 29% of them. 37 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Southwest on ABQ to DEN

The latest arrival of the period was on 8 August 2026, 7 hours 6 minutes behind schedule. Three of the five worst days fell in December 2025.

The latest arrivals of Southwest on ABQ to DEN in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
8 August 2026	7 hours 6 minutes	None reported
19 December 2025	6 hours 17 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
13 March 2026	4 hours 57 minutes	Carrier
28 December 2025	4 hours 45 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
19 December 2025	4 hours 9 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

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 17,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
37%
Carrier
17%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
0%

40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 16,797 reported delay minutes.

37% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 6,136 minutes out of 17,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.48%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 349 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 75.4% on time across 1,465 flights, 4 points below 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 1,463 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 Southwest on ABQ to DEN

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 87.6% on time and August 61.8%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,453 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures