Carrier route record
WNDEN→FLL
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 383
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on DEN to FLL draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 383 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on DEN to FLL runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 116 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 379 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.52%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.4%
Every carrier on DEN to FLL, 1,630 flights
These figures cover 383 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on DEN to FLL
Southwest flew 383 of the 1,630 flights on DEN to FLL, about 23% of it. Its 66.0% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.2% to JetBlue at 61.9%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,225 | 81.2% | 58 min | 0.33% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 383 | 66.0% | 51 min | 0.52% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 22 | 61.9% | 98 min | 4.55% | D− |
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 383 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am190 flights71.3%
- 11am–2pm109 flights61.7%
- 2pm–5pm21 flights—
- 5pm–8pm63 flights65.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 61.7% on time against 71.3% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 190 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to FLL through the year
June is the worst month at 46.7% on time, 38 points below November, the best at 84.8%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 42 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 79.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 54.4%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 6,608 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
40% 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 6,608 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 6,608 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,538 of the 6,608 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.52%, below the national 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 1,703 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 runs 67.6% on time across 383 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 383 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 FLL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 383 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 66.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 379 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to FLL, every carrier
- Southwest on FLL to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to FLL81.2%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.