Carrier route record

WNABQ→DEN

Southwest Airlines · Albuquerque to Denver

Flights: 1,463
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 46%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,463 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 895 at 85.6% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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

79.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,454 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.62%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.1%

Every carrier on ABQ to DEN, 3,175 flights

These figures cover 1,463 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on ABQ to DEN

Southwest flew 1,463 of the 3,175 flights on ABQ to DEN, about 46% of it. Its 79.1% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.6% to Southwest at 79.1%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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	895	85.6%	57 min	0.78%	A+
United Airlines	817	83.5%	78 min	0.86%	B+
Southwest Airlines (this page)	1,463	79.1%	59 min	0.62%	B+

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 85.6%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 32 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am388 flights95.6%
8am–11am256 flights84.6%
11am–2pm179 flights84.8%
2pm–5pm303 flights63.7%
5pm–8pm276 flights66.7%
8pm–5am61 flights67.8%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.6% of the time, against 63.7% for the afternoon window. That is 32 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, July worst

July is the worst month at 63.7% on time, 24 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 83.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.9%. 9 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 18,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
46%
National Airspace System
32%
Carrier
16%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
0%

46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 17,782 reported delay minutes.

32% 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 5,742 minutes out of 18,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, below the national 1.81% 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

6.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 74.1% on time across 1,464 flights, 5 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 5 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 July 63.7%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,454 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