Carrier route record
WNDEN→BDL
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Hartford
- Flights
- 160
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on DEN to BDL earns a D−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 56.1% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 21 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average about 50 minutes. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 160 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on DEN to BDL runs 21 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 212 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
56.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 155 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.12%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.2%
Every carrier on DEN to BDL, 887 flights
These figures cover 160 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% 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 BDL
Southwest flew 160 of the 887 flights on DEN to BDL, about 18% of it. Its 56.1% on time is 19 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 79.3% to Southwest at 56.1%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 727 | 79.3% | 57 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 160 | 56.1% | 51 min | 3.12% | D− |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 160 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am9 flights—
- 11am–2pm20 flights—
- 2pm–5pm48 flights57.8%
- 5pm–8pm82 flights51.2%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 57.8% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 51.2%. 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 82 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to BDL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202568 flights57.4%
- Jan–Mar 202634 flights73.3%
- Jul–Sep 202628 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 80%. 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 56.1% on time across 160 flights.
Split by quarter, Southwest on DEN to BDL logged 30 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 68 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 34 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 28 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 56.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on DEN to BDL runs when it is late
The 68 late arrivals split 30 under half an hour, 20 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 18 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early8 flights5.2%
- Within 15 min79 flights51.0%
- 15–29 min late30 flights19.4%
- 30–59 min late20 flights12.9%
- 1–2 hours late12 flights7.7%
- 2+ hours late6 flights3.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 155 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
16 of 73 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. In the other direction, 11 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at BDL.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on DEN to BDL
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 August 2026, 4 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 August 2026 | 4 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 October 2025 | 2 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 August 2026 | 2 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 October 2025 | 2 hours 17 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 December 2025 | 2 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 45% of the 3,458 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,458 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 to one. The split is drawn from 3,458 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,556 of the 3,458 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.12%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
11.6% 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 1,671 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 73.9% on time across 160 flights, 18 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 18 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 160 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 BDL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.12% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 50 minutes; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 155 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.