Carrier route record

WNDEN→RIC

Southwest Airlines · Denver to Richmond

Flights: 297
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 39%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on DEN to RIC draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 297 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on DEN to RIC runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 176 extra late arrivals.

On time

60.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 290 completed flights

Avg delay

47 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.01%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

69.2%

Every carrier on DEN to RIC, 756 flights

These figures cover 297 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 RIC

Southwest flew 297 of the 756 flights on DEN to RIC, about 39% of it. Its 60.0% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 90.6% to Southwest at 60.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to RIC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	64	90.6%	57 min	0.00%	A+
United Airlines	395	72.4%	68 min	0.76%	C+
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	297	60.0%	47 min	1.01%	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 27 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–11am79 flights76.6%
11am–2pm129 flights55.1%
2pm–5pm49 flights54.3%
5pm–8pm40 flights50.0%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 76.6% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 129 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on DEN to RIC through the year

Jul–Sep 202591 flights53.9%
Oct–Dec 202567 flights61.2%
Jan–Mar 202657 flights73.6%
Apr–Jun 202682 flights56.8%

Scale runs 45% to 80%. 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 60.0% on time across 297 flights.

Southwest on DEN to RIC did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 73.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 53.9%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 74 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 51.2%. 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 55% of the 5,389 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
55%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
1%

55% 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 5,389 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 55 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 5,389 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 76.6% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.35%.

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 roughly 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,481 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 runs 59.9% on time across 297 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 297 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 RIC

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 297 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 60.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 290 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