Carrier route record
WNELP→DEN
Southwest Airlines · El Paso to Denver
- Flights
- 780
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on ELP to DEN lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 780 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on ELP to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 779 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.2%
Every carrier on ELP to DEN, 1,848 flights
These figures cover 780 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% 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 ELP to DEN
Southwest flew 780 of the 1,848 flights on ELP to DEN, about 42% of it. Its 76.6% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.5% to SkyWest at 53.3%. Two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 698 | 83.5% | 82 min | 0.72% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 339 | 78.6% | 90 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 780 | 76.6% | 66 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 31 | 53.3% | 77 min | 3.23% | F− |
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 56 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–8am346 flights95.7%
- 8am–11am47 flights80.9%
- 11am–2pm37 flights89.2%
- 2pm–5pm130 flights40.0%
- 5pm–8pm168 flights61.1%
- 8pm–5am52 flights78.8%
Scale runs 30% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.7% of the time, against 40.0% for the afternoon window. That is 56 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 346 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on ELP to DEN through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 61.3%. January is the strongest month at 91.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 30 points. June was the busiest month here, with 83 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 72.0%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
40% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 12,047 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 95.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.5% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 69.7% on time across 781 flights, 7 points below 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 780 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 ELP to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 780 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 76.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 779 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ELP to DEN, every carrier
- Southwest on DEN to ELP, the return leg
- United Airlines on ELP to DEN83.5%
- Frontier Airlines on ELP to DEN78.6%
- 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.