Carrier route record
WNDEN→MAF
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Midland
- Flights
- 275
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- 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 MAF earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 57.4% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 20 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average about an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 275 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 MAF runs 20 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 199 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
57.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 270 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.82%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.3%
Every carrier on DEN to MAF, 1,497 flights
These figures cover 275 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.9% 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 MAF
Southwest flew 275 of the 1,497 flights on DEN to MAF, about 18% of it. Its 57.4% on time is 20 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 81.8% to Southwest at 57.4%.
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 | 1,222 | 81.8% | 75 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 275 | 57.4% | 64 min | 1.82% | D |
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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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am17 flights—
- 11am–2pm34 flights73.5%
- 2pm–5pm8 flights—
- 5pm–8pm141 flights53.6%
- 8pm–5am75 flights47.9%
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.9% on time, against 73.5% for the 11am–2pm 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 141 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to MAF through the year
- Jul–Sep 202521 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202549 flights67.3%
- Jan–Mar 202661 flights68.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights50.0%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights38.0%
Scale runs 30% to 75%. 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 57.4% on time across 275 flights.
Southwest on DEN to MAF did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 68.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 38.0%, a swing of 30 points on roughly 69 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, Friday is the strongest day at 65.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 54.8%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on DEN to MAF runs when it is late
The 115 late arrivals split 28 under half an hour, 44 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 43 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early36 flights13.3%
- Within 15 min119 flights44.1%
- 15–29 min late28 flights10.4%
- 30–59 min late44 flights16.3%
- 1–2 hours late27 flights10.0%
- 2+ hours late16 flights5.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 270 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
23 of 133 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. Only 5 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on DEN to MAF
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 October 2025, 5 hours 51 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 24 October 2025 | 5 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 August 2026 | 4 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 July 2026 | 3 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 June 2026 | 3 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 May 2026 | 2 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 7,398 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
66% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,398 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 66 to one. The split is drawn from 7,398 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.82% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
15.9% 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 95.6% on time across 275 flights, 38 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 38 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 275 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 MAF
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 275 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 57.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 270 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.