Carrier route record
WNCVG→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Cincinnati to Denver
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on CVG to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 364 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 727 at 87.2% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Southwest on CVG to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 356 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.7%
Every carrier on CVG to DEN, 1,498 flights
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on CVG to DEN
Southwest flew 364 of the 1,498 flights on CVG to DEN, about 24% of it. Its 74.2% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.2% to Southwest at 74.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 727 | 87.2% | 78 min | 0.55% | A+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 26 | 84.6% | 35 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 381 | 82.0% | 87 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 364 | 74.2% | 51 min | 1.37% | C |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 87.2%, 5 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 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 364 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am11 flights—
- 11am–2pm134 flights77.4%
- 2pm–5pm86 flights67.5%
- 5pm–8pm103 flights74.5%
- 8pm–5am30 flights—
Scale runs 60% 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 77.4% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 67.5%. 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 134 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on CVG to DEN through the year
December is the weak month at 61.3% on time, against 86.7% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 82.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.0%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on CVG to DEN runs when it is late
Most of the lateness is short. 47 of the 92 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 23 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early45 flights12.6%
- Within 15 min219 flights61.5%
- 15–29 min late47 flights13.2%
- 30–59 min late22 flights6.2%
- 1–2 hours late17 flights4.8%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 356 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 118 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 40 still arrived on time. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on CVG to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 12 December 2025, 5 hours 43 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 12 December 2025 | 5 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 November 2025 | 4 hours 2 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 22 September 2025 | 3 hours 5 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 8 July 2026 | 2 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 June 2026 | 2 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 4,676 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 13%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,676 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 4,676 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.82%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.5% 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 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,069 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.2% on time across 364 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 CVG to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 364 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 74.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 356 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to DEN, every carrier
- Southwest on DEN to CVG, the return leg
- United Airlines on CVG to DEN87.2%
- Frontier Airlines on CVG to DEN82.0%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.