Carrier route record
WNDEN→LBB
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Lubbock
- Flights
- 280
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- 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 LBB draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 280 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on DEN to LBB runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 169 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 273 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.14%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.4%
Every carrier on DEN to LBB, 980 flights
These figures cover 280 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on DEN to LBB
Southwest flew 280 of the 980 flights on DEN to LBB, about 29% of it. Its 60.4% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 75.8% to Southwest at 60.4%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 700 | 75.8% | 101 min | 1.43% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 280 | 60.4% | 70 min | 2.14% | 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 55 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am39 flights94.4%
- 11am–2pm25 flights—
- 2pm–5pm17 flights—
- 5pm–8pm135 flights54.5%
- 8pm–5am64 flights39.7%
Scale runs 30% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 39.7% on time, against 94.4% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 135 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to LBB through the year
- Jul–Sep 202521 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202559 flights71.9%
- Jan–Mar 202656 flights76.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights55.1%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights29.4%
Scale runs 20% 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 60.4% on time across 280 flights.
Southwest on DEN to LBB did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 76.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 29.4%, a swing of 47 points on roughly 70 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 69.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 51.2%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on DEN to LBB runs when it is late
The 108 late arrivals split 27 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 48 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early28 flights10.3%
- Within 15 min137 flights50.2%
- 15–29 min late27 flights9.9%
- 30–59 min late33 flights12.1%
- 1–2 hours late31 flights11.4%
- 2+ hours late17 flights6.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 273 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
26 of 127 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. 7 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on DEN to LBB
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 December 2025, 5 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 December 2025 | 5 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 May 2026 | 5 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 August 2026 | 4 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 February 2026 | 3 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 July 2026 | 3 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 68% of the 7,546 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 68%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
68% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,546 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 68 to one. The split is drawn from 7,546 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 94.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.14% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
17.6% 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 456 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 90.3% on time across 282 flights, 30 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 30 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 280 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 LBB
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 280 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 60.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 273 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.