Carrier route record

WNDEN→OMA

Southwest Airlines · Denver to Omaha

Flights: 1,404
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 43%
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 OMA 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 roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,404 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 385 at 89.0% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on DEN to OMA runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 51 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,398 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.43%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.8%

Every carrier on DEN to OMA, 3,289 flights

These figures cover 1,404 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 OMA

Southwest flew 1,404 of the 3,289 flights on DEN to OMA, about 43% of it. Its 72.5% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 89.0% to Frontier at 70.3%. 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 89.0% of the time; United Airlines manages 76.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,287 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to OMA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	385	89.0%	60 min	0.78%	A+
United Airlines	1,287	76.5%	64 min	0.31%	B+
Southwest Airlines (this page)	1,404	72.5%	53 min	0.43%	C+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	213	70.3%	72 min	0.00%	C+

The spread between SkyWest and United is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 42 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am81 flights88.9%
8am–11am296 flights83.1%
11am–2pm340 flights77.5%
2pm–5pm238 flights68.4%
5pm–8pm315 flights66.6%
8pm–5am134 flights47.4%

Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.4% on time, against 88.9% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 340 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on DEN to OMA through the year

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

June is the worst month at 59.1% on time, 25 points below November, the best at 84.5%. 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 145 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.6%. 13 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 56% of the 20,000 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
56%
Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
10%
Extreme weather
1%

56% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 56 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 20,458 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.9% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.43%, 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

7.9% 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 roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 472 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 71.3% on time across 1,404 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 1,404 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 OMA

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 84.5% on time and June 59.1%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,398 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