Carrier route record
WNCLT→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Charlotte to Denver
- Flights
- 189
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on CLT to DEN draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 189 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 675 at 85.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on CLT to DEN runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 120 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 183 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.59%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on CLT to DEN, 2,816 flights
These figures cover 189 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on CLT to DEN
Southwest flew 189 of the 2,816 flights on CLT to DEN, about 7% of it. Its 65.6% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.1% to Southwest at 65.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 85.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 75.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,717 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 675 | 85.1% | 79 min | 1.19% | A |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 84.2% | 214 min | 5.00% | B− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 215 | 76.9% | 56 min | 1.40% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,717 | 75.1% | 61 min | 1.22% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 189 | 65.6% | 52 min | 1.59% | C |
United leads American by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 41 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am25 flights—
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm85 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm60 flights40.7%
- 5pm–8pm18 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 30% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 81.7% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 40.7%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 85 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on CLT to DEN through the year
- Jul–Sep 202566 flights40.6%
- Oct–Dec 202554 flights73.6%
- Jan–Mar 202662 flights88.1%
- Apr–Jun 20267 flights—
Scale runs 30% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 65.6% on time across 189 flights.
Southwest on CLT to DEN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 88.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 40.6%, a swing of 47 points on roughly 63 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 65.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 48.4%. 17 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 3,278 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,166 of the 3,278 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,278 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.59% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.59%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,337 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 70.1% on time across 189 flights, 5 points above 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 189 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 CLT to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 189 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 65.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 183 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to DEN, every carrier
- Southwest on DEN to CLT, the return leg
- United Airlines on CLT to DEN85.1%
- Frontier Airlines on CLT to DEN76.9%
- American Airlines on CLT to DEN75.1%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.