Route reliability record
LIT→DEN
Little Rock to Denver
- Flights
- 1,570
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 771 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,570 LIT to DEN flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 365 at 81.9% on time.
Best time to fly LIT to DEN: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 79.4%, against 77.3% 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
77.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,552 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
81.9% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 1,570 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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 LIT to DEN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 81.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 75.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,048 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 85.4% | 58 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 81.9% | 81 min | 1.10% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,048 | 75.7% | 90 min | 0.67% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 116 | 74.8% | 102 min | 0.86% | C+ |
Southwest leads SkyWest by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on LIT 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Little Rock to Denver
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LIT → DENLittle Rock to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 81.0% | 81.9% | 1.10% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. LIT → DENLittle Rock to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 75.2% | 75.7% | 0.67% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OO 4686 13:33 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 25 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am465 flights81.1%
- 11am–2pm540 flights86.5%
- 2pm–5pm468 flights64.1%
- 5pm–8pm51 flights62.0%
- 8pm–5am46 flights82.6%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.0% on time, against 86.5% for the 11am–2pm 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 540 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 47 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 47.3% on time, 47 points below November, the best at 94.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 140 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.6%. 6 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 43% of the 31,000 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 13,000 of the 31,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 31,149 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.76%, below the national 1.81% 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.1% 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.
The 771 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 79.4% on time across 1,571 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,570 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 94.5% on time and July 47.3%, a swing of 47 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,552 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LIT to DEN questions
How often is LIT to DEN delayed?
Roughly 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 22.7% of the 1,570 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LIT to DEN?
Southwest Airlines leads at 81.9% on time across 365 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 75.7%, a gap of 6 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LIT to DEN?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 86.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.0%, 25 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 LIT to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 47.3% on time, compared with 94.5% in November. Across the year that is 47 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 LIT — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on LIT to DEN81.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on LIT to DEN75.7%
- Frontier Airlines on LIT to DEN74.8%
- LIT to DFW, a related route73.2%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- LIT to ATL, a related route89.1%
- United Airlines on-time record85.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record81.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.7%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. LIT to DEN and DEN to LIT 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.