Carrier route record
WNANC→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Anchorage to Denver
- Flights
- 109
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on ANC to DEN earns a D+, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 55.0% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 22 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average about an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 109 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on ANC to DEN runs 22 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 223 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
55.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 109 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.5%
Every carrier on ANC to DEN, 852 flights
These figures cover 109 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on ANC to DEN
Southwest flew 109 of the 852 flights on ANC to DEN, about 13% of it. Its 55.0% on time is 27 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 89.8% to Southwest at 55.0%. One 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 89.8% | 30 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 615 | 84.4% | 74 min | 1.30% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 109 | 55.0% | 64 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 109 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Southwest's ANC to DEN record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 55.0% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Southwest on ANC to DEN through the year
- Apr–Jun 202647 flights59.6%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights51.6%
Scale runs 45% to 65%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 55.0% on time across 109 flights.
Split by quarter, Southwest on ANC to DEN logged 47 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 62 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 55.0% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on ANC to DEN runs when it is late
The 49 late arrivals split 15 under half an hour, 17 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 17 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early5 flights4.6%
- Within 15 min55 flights50.5%
- 15–29 min late15 flights13.8%
- 30–59 min late17 flights15.6%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights9.2%
- 2+ hours late7 flights6.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 109 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 58 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 3 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on ANC to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 July 2026, 3 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 July 2026 | 3 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 June 2026 | 3 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 August 2026 | 3 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 August 2026 | 2 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 July 2026 | 2 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 85% of the 3,146 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 85%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 7%Carrier
85% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,146 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 85 to one. The split is drawn from 3,146 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
15.6% 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 2,405 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 38.5% on time across 109 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 109 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 ANC to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 109 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 55.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 109 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ANC to DEN, every carrier
- Southwest on DEN to ANC, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on ANC to DEN89.8%
- United Airlines on ANC to DEN84.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.