Carrier route record
WNDEN→MAF
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Midland
- Flights
- 265
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- 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 MAF draws a D. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 265 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on DEN to MAF runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 182 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 261 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.2%
Every carrier on DEN to MAF, 1,462 flights
These figures cover 265 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% 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 MAF
Southwest flew 265 of the 1,462 flights on DEN to MAF, about 18% of it. Its 59.4% on time is 18 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 81.1% to Southwest at 59.4%.
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 | 1,197 | 81.1% | 74 min | 0.84% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 265 | 59.4% | 65 min | 1.51% | D |
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 35 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–11am17 flights—
- 11am–2pm48 flights75.0%
- 2pm–5pm8 flights—
- 5pm–8pm125 flights56.9%
- 8pm–5am67 flights40.0%
Scale runs 30% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 40.0% on time, against 75.0% 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 125 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to MAF through the year
- Jul–Sep 202564 flights58.1%
- Oct–Dec 202549 flights67.3%
- Jan–Mar 202661 flights68.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights50.0%
Scale runs 40% 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 59.4% on time across 265 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 Apr–Jun 2026 at 50.0%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 66 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 63.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.3%. 9 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 70% of the 6,925 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.
- 70%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
70% 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 6,925 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 70 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 6,925 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.51% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 15.7% 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.
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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 95.4% on time across 265 flights, 36 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 36 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 265 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. 265 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 59.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 261 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.