Carrier route record

WNDEN→MSP

Southwest Airlines · Denver to Minneapolis

Flights: 1,724
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 29%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on DEN to MSP sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,724 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,805 at 81.1% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.1% on time across 1,805 flights.

On time

72.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,713 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.58%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.6%

Every carrier on DEN to MSP, 5,848 flights

These figures cover 1,724 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on DEN to MSP

Southwest flew 1,724 of the 5,848 flights on DEN to MSP, about 29% of it. Its 72.7% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.7% to Frontier at 71.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.1% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 71.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 618 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	244	88.7%	78 min	2.46%	A
Delta Air Lines	1,805	81.1%	73 min	0.89%	B+
United Airlines	1,457	79.9%	68 min	0.34%	B+
Southwest Airlines (this page)	1,724	72.7%	50 min	0.58%	C+
Frontier Airlines	618	71.7%	62 min	0.49%	C+

Delta leads Frontier by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am76 flights92.1%
8am–11am466 flights87.7%
11am–2pm301 flights73.8%
2pm–5pm334 flights69.6%
5pm–8pm409 flights58.8%
8pm–5am138 flights57.0%

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.0% on time, against 92.1% for the 5am–8am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 466 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on DEN to MSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, June worst

June is the worst month at 62.0% on time, 23 points below April, the best at 85.4%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 173 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.8%. 8 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 52% of the 24,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

52% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 43 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 23,564 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,349 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.58%, below the national 1.81% 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

6.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 680 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 75.7% on time across 1,712 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,724 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on DEN to MSP

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 85.4% on time and June 62.0%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,713 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures