Carrier route record

WNLBB→DEN

Southwest Airlines · Lubbock to Denver

Flights: 272
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 28%
Carriers: 2

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

Southwest on LBB to DEN earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 272 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's LBB to DEN record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 123 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 268 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.47%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.5%

Every carrier on LBB to DEN, 980 flights

These figures cover 272 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on LBB to DEN

Southwest flew 272 of the 980 flights on LBB to DEN, about 28% of it. Its 89.9% on time is 14 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 89.9% to SkyWest at 69.9%.

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 LBB to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	272	89.9%	60 min	1.47%	A
SkyWest Airlines	708	69.9%	98 min	1.55%	C

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 25 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–8am159 flights96.2%
8am–11am8 flights—
11am–2pm60 flights86.2%
2pm–5pm43 flights71.4%
5pm–8pm2 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.2% of the time, against 71.4% for the afternoon window. That is 25 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 159 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on LBB to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 202564 flights84.4%
Oct–Dec 202559 flights87.7%
Jan–Mar 202658 flights87.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights96.7%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. 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 89.9% on time across 272 flights.

Southwest on LBB to DEN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 84.4%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 68 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 97.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 85.1%. 13 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 1,608 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
37%
National Airspace System
33%
Late-arriving aircraft
23%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 600 of the 1,608 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,608 reported delay minutes.

33% 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 532 minutes out of 1,608, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 1.47% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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 67.2% on time across 270 flights, 23 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 23 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 272 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 LBB to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 272 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 89.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 268 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