Carrier route record
WNDEN→LIT
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Little Rock
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on DEN to LIT lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's DEN to LIT record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights
Avg delay
43 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.6%
Every carrier on DEN to LIT, 1,574 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on DEN to LIT
Southwest flew 365 of the 1,574 flights on DEN to LIT, about 23% of it. Its 81.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.7% to United at 63.7%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 986 | 85.7% | 78 min | 0.61% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 365 | 81.3% | 43 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 120 | 77.5% | 91 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 103 | 63.7% | 81 min | 0.97% | 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 28 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am145 flights91.7%
- 11am–2pm162 flights77.2%
- 2pm–5pm44 flights63.6%
- 5pm–8pm14 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.7% of the time, against 63.6% for the afternoon window. That is 28 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 162 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to LIT through the year
August is the worst month at 61.3% on time, 32 points below November, the best at 93.3%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.6%, a spread of 22 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on DEN to LIT runs when it is late
Most of the lateness is short. 37 of the 68 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 7 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early48 flights13.2%
- Within 15 min247 flights68.0%
- 15–29 min late37 flights10.2%
- 30–59 min late24 flights6.6%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights0.8%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 363 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
21 of 75 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on DEN to LIT
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 May 2026, 5 hours 9 minutes behind schedule. The five worst days are spread across May, December, April, March and February, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 May 2026 | 5 hours 9 minutes | None reported |
| 19 December 2025 | 3 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 April 2026 | 2 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 March 2026 | 2 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 February 2026 | 1 hour 49 minutes | Carrier |
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 2,594 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,594 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 to one. The split is drawn from 2,594 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,064 of the 2,594 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 771 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 runs 83.3% on time across 365 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. 365 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 LIT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 365 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 81.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 363 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to LIT, every carrier
- Southwest on LIT to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to LIT85.7%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to LIT77.5%
- United Airlines on DEN to LIT63.7%
- 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.