Carrier route record
WNBUR→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Burbank to Denver
- Flights
- 1,294
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 58%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on BUR to DEN 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,294 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's BUR to DEN record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,281 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
84.0%
Every carrier on BUR to DEN, 2,219 flights
These figures cover 1,294 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 BUR to DEN
Southwest flew 1,294 of the 2,219 flights on BUR to DEN, most of the route. Its 82.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Frontier at 76.7%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 881 | 85.9% | 65 min | 0.45% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,294 | 82.9% | 65 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 76.7% | 158 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 25 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–8am292 flights94.5%
- 8am–11am356 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm298 flights81.5%
- 2pm–5pm325 flights69.3%
- 5pm–8pm13 flights—
- 8pm–5am10 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.5% of the time, against 69.3% for the afternoon window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 356 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on BUR to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 73.2% on time, 26 points below January, the best at 98.9%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 81.0%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
41% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 14,253 reported delay minutes.
42% 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 5,953 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, 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
6.5% 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.
The 850 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.3% on time across 1,297 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,294 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 BUR to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 98.9% on time and July 73.2%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,281 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BUR to DEN, every carrier
- Southwest on DEN to BUR, the return leg
- United Airlines on BUR to DEN85.9%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.