Carrier route record
WNDEN→ANC
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Anchorage
- 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 DEN to ANC earns an F+, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 38.5% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 39 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 25 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on DEN to ANC runs 39 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 388 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
38.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 109 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.1%
Every carrier on DEN to ANC, 852 flights
These figures cover 109 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.4% 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 DEN to ANC
Southwest flew 109 of the 852 flights on DEN to ANC, about 13% of it. Its 38.5% on time is 36 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 88.0% to Southwest at 38.5%. 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 | 88.0% | 38 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 615 | 77.6% | 46 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 109 | 38.5% | 60 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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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 DEN to ANC record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 38.5% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to ANC through the year
- Apr–Jun 202647 flights38.3%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights38.7%
Scale runs 30% to 45%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 38.5% on time across 109 flights.
Split by quarter, Southwest on DEN to ANC 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 38.5% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on DEN to ANC runs when it is late
The 67 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 30 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 19 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early6 flights5.5%
- Within 15 min36 flights33.0%
- 15–29 min late18 flights16.5%
- 30–59 min late30 flights27.5%
- 1–2 hours late11 flights10.1%
- 2+ hours late8 flights7.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 109 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
11 of 73 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. 5 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on DEN to ANC
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 July 2026, 3 hours 44 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in July 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 July 2026 | 3 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 August 2026 | 3 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 July 2026 | 3 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 July 2026 | 2 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 June 2026 | 2 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 4,031 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,031 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 56 to one. The split is drawn from 4,031 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
17.4% 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 55.0% on time across 109 flights, 17 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 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 DEN to ANC
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 38.5% 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
- DEN to ANC, every carrier
- Southwest on ANC to DEN, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on DEN to ANC88.0%
- United Airlines on DEN to ANC77.6%
- 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.