Carrier route record

WNDEN→CLT

Southwest Airlines · Denver to Charlotte

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 DEN to CLT sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 189 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,715 at 85.1% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on DEN to CLT runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 75 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 184 completed flights

Avg delay

43 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.65%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.4%

Every carrier on DEN to CLT, 2,813 flights

These figures cover 189 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on DEN to CLT

Southwest flew 189 of the 2,813 flights on DEN to CLT, about 7% of it. Its 70.1% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 86.7% to Southwest at 70.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 85.1% of the time; United Airlines manages 77.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 675 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	214	86.7%	54 min	1.40%	A
American Airlines	1,715	85.1%	76 min	1.40%	A
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	20	80.0%	44 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	675	77.6%	66 min	0.59%	B+
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	189	70.1%	43 min	2.65%	C

American leads United by 8 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 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 189 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am70 flights72.1%
11am–2pm67 flights70.8%
2pm–5pm40 flights69.2%
5pm–8pm12 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 72.1% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.

Across the year

Southwest on DEN to CLT through the year

Jul–Sep 202566 flights54.5%
Oct–Dec 202554 flights78.8%
Jan–Mar 202662 flights79.7%
Apr–Jun 20267 flights—

Scale runs 45% to 85%. 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 70.1% on time across 189 flights.

Southwest on DEN to CLT did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 79.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 54.5%, a swing of 25 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 93.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.5%. 26 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 2,384 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
2%

45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 2,384 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 2,384 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 72.1% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.65%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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

6.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 65.6% on time across 189 flights, 5 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 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 DEN to CLT

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 70.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 184 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures