Carrier route record
WNDEN→OKC
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Oklahoma City
- Flights
- 1,223
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on DEN to OKC sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,223 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,256 at 82.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on DEN to OKC runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 67 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,212 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on DEN to OKC, 3,164 flights
These figures cover 1,223 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 OKC
Southwest flew 1,223 of the 3,164 flights on DEN to OKC, about 39% of it. Its 70.9% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 82.4% to Southwest at 70.9%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 82.4% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 75.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 366 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,256 | 82.4% | 68 min | 0.48% | B+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 319 | 80.4% | 62 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 366 | 75.3% | 67 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,223 | 70.9% | 55 min | 0.82% | C+ |
SkyWest leads Frontier by 7 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 49 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am29 flights—
- 8am–11am279 flights87.4%
- 11am–2pm216 flights80.8%
- 2pm–5pm251 flights74.7%
- 5pm–8pm321 flights58.6%
- 8pm–5am127 flights38.7%
Scale runs 30% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 38.7% on time, against 87.4% 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 321 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to OKC through the year
July is the worst month at 56.8% on time, 32 points below January, the best at 88.4%. 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 119 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 63.1%. 14 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 57% of the 19,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
57% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 19,348 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 87.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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
8.3% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 495 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 78.0% on time across 1,223 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,223 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 OKC
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 88.4% on time and July 56.8%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,212 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to OKC, every carrier
- Southwest on OKC to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to OKC82.4%
- United Airlines on DEN to OKC80.4%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to OKC75.3%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.