Carrier route record
WNDEN→LBB
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Lubbock
- Flights
- 270
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on DEN to LBB draws a C. About 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 270 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on DEN to LBB runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 104 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 265 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.9%
Every carrier on DEN to LBB, 977 flights
These figures cover 270 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% 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 LBB
Southwest flew 270 of the 977 flights on DEN to LBB, about 28% of it. Its 67.2% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 73.7% to Southwest at 67.2%.
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 | 707 | 73.7% | 102 min | 1.56% | C |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 270 | 67.2% | 76 min | 1.48% | C |
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 44 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am39 flights94.4%
- 11am–2pm39 flights84.6%
- 2pm–5pm36 flights69.4%
- 5pm–8pm114 flights58.0%
- 8pm–5am42 flights50.0%
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% 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 114 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to LBB through the year
- Jul–Sep 202564 flights71.9%
- Oct–Dec 202559 flights71.9%
- Jan–Mar 202656 flights76.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights55.1%
Scale runs 45% 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 67.2% on time across 270 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 Apr–Jun 2026 at 55.1%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 68 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, Monday is the strongest day at 68.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.4%. 12 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 62% of the 6,595 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.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
62% 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 6,595 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 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 6,595 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 1.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.37%.
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. 14.0% 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 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 89.9% on time across 272 flights, 23 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 23 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 270 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. 270 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 67.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 265 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.