Route reliability record
LBB→DEN
Lubbock to Denver
- Flights
- 980
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 456 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 980 LBB to DEN flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly LBB to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.8% of the time and Saturday flights 82.6%, against 75.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 959 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
69.9% on time across 708 flights
These figures cover 980 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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
Which airline is most reliable on LBB to DEN
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 272 | 89.9% | 60 min | 1.47% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 708 | 69.9% | 98 min | 1.55% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on LBB to DEN
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 41 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–8am196 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am337 flights84.2%
- 11am–2pm80 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm43 flights71.4%
- 5pm–8pm324 flights52.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.9% on time, against 93.8% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 337 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 64.6% on time, 21 points below March, the best at 85.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 107 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 70.0%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 22,000 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.
- 50%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 11,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 21,920 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.53% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.61%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 456 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.9% on time across 977 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 980 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 980 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 75.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 959 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LBB to DEN questions
How often is LBB to DEN delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.5% of the 980 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is LBB to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
75.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LBB to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 52.9%, 41 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on LBB to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 64.6% on time, compared with 85.4% in March. Across the year that is 21 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to LBB — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on LBB to DEN89.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on LBB to DEN69.9%
- LBB to DFW, a related route82.4%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- LBB to DAL, a related route84.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record89.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record69.9%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. LBB to DEN and DEN to LBB are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.