Carrier route record
WNDEN→ABQ
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Albuquerque
- Flights
- 1,465
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 46%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on DEN to ABQ sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,465 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 908 at 84.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Southwest on DEN to ABQ from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,457 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.3%
Every carrier on DEN to ABQ, 3,218 flights
These figures cover 1,465 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on DEN to ABQ
Southwest flew 1,465 of the 3,218 flights on DEN to ABQ, about 46% of it. Its 75.4% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 84.4% to Southwest at 75.4%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 84.4% of the time; United Airlines manages 76.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 845 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 908 | 84.4% | 67 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 845 | 76.8% | 63 min | 0.47% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,465 | 75.4% | 57 min | 0.41% | B+ |
SkyWest leads United by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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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 36 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am4 flights—
- 8am–11am360 flights92.2%
- 11am–2pm313 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm249 flights76.1%
- 5pm–8pm224 flights55.9%
- 8pm–5am315 flights60.3%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.9% on time, against 92.2% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 360 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to ABQ through the year
December is the weak month at 66.7% on time, against 84.5% in February. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 142 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.0%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on DEN to ABQ runs when it is late
The 358 late arrivals split 139 under half an hour, 112 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 107 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early268 flights18.4%
- Within 15 min831 flights57.0%
- 15–29 min late139 flights9.5%
- 30–59 min late112 flights7.7%
- 1–2 hours late66 flights4.5%
- 2+ hours late41 flights2.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,457 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
121 of 459 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. Only 20 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on DEN to ABQ
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 August 2026, 6 hours 36 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 August 2026 | 6 hours 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 August 2026 | 5 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 July 2026 | 4 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 December 2025 | 4 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 April 2026 | 4 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 to one. The split is drawn from 20,374 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,037 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, below the national 1.89% 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
7.3% 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 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.6% on time across 1,463 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,465 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 DEN to ABQ
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 84.5% on time and December 66.7%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,457 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to ABQ, every carrier
- Southwest on ABQ to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to ABQ84.4%
- United Airlines on DEN to ABQ76.8%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) 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.