Carrier route record
WNDEN→ELP
Southwest Airlines · Denver to El Paso
- Flights
- 795
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- 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 ELP sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 795 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on DEN to ELP runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 85 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 791 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.25%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.8%
Every carrier on DEN to ELP, 1,872 flights
These figures cover 795 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 ELP
Southwest flew 795 of the 1,872 flights on DEN to ELP, about 42% of it. Its 68.8% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 80.1% to Southwest at 68.8%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 348 | 80.1% | 66 min | 0.29% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 729 | 78.8% | 62 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 795 | 68.8% | 56 min | 0.25% | C+ |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 48 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am280 flights86.4%
- 11am–2pm84 flights78.6%
- 2pm–5pm31 flights54.8%
- 5pm–8pm62 flights38.7%
- 8pm–5am337 flights58.3%
Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 38.7% on time, against 86.4% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 337 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to ELP through the year
June is the worst month at 47.6% on time, 41 points below February, the best at 89.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 71.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 64.4%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on DEN to ELP runs when it is late
The 247 late arrivals split 86 under half an hour, 80 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 81 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early105 flights13.3%
- Within 15 min439 flights55.5%
- 15–29 min late86 flights10.9%
- 30–59 min late80 flights10.1%
- 1–2 hours late58 flights7.3%
- 2+ hours late23 flights2.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 791 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
55 of 283 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. 19 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on DEN to ELP
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 March 2026, 4 hours 39 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 March 2026 | 4 hours 39 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 March 2026 | 3 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 July 2026 | 3 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 September 2025 | 3 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 June 2026 | 3 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
62% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 to one. The split is drawn from 13,739 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 86.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.25%, 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
10.2% 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.
The 563 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 76.8% on time across 794 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 795 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 ELP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 795 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 68.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 791 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to ELP, every carrier
- Southwest on ELP to DEN, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to ELP80.1%
- United Airlines on DEN to ELP78.8%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- 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.