Carrier route record
WNELP→DEN
Southwest Airlines · El Paso to Denver
- Flights
- 794
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on ELP to DEN lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 794 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
76.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 790 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.25%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.8%
Every carrier on ELP to DEN, 1,871 flights
These figures cover 794 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on ELP to DEN
Southwest flew 794 of the 1,871 flights on ELP to DEN, about 42% of it. Its 76.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.6% to Frontier at 76.7%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 729 | 84.6% | 91 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 794 | 76.8% | 64 min | 0.25% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 348 | 76.7% | 87 min | 0.29% | B+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 61 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am351 flights97.4%
- 8am–11am57 flights82.5%
- 11am–2pm32 flights90.6%
- 2pm–5pm181 flights36.1%
- 5pm–8pm121 flights70.8%
- 8pm–5am52 flights78.8%
Scale runs 30% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.4% of the time, against 36.1% for the afternoon window. That is 61 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 351 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. July was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.2%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on ELP to DEN runs when it is late
The 183 late arrivals split 53 under half an hour, 64 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 66 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early101 flights12.8%
- Within 15 min506 flights64.1%
- 15–29 min late53 flights6.7%
- 30–59 min late64 flights8.1%
- 1–2 hours late40 flights5.1%
- 2+ hours late26 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 790 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 187 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 19 made it up before arrival. Only 15 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on ELP to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 November 2025, 4 hours 25 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 November 2025 | 4 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 August 2026 | 4 hours 8 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 26 September 2025 | 4 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 August 2026 | 3 hours 53 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 5 September 2025 | 3 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
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
- 36%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 4%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. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 11,698 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 4,190 minutes out of 12,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.25%, below the national 1.89% 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
8.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.8% on time across 795 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 794 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. 794 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 76.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 790 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 DEN84.6%
- Frontier Airlines on ELP to DEN76.7%
- 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 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.