Route reliability record
LIT→DEN
Little Rock to Denver
- Flights
- 1,572
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 771 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,572 LIT to DEN flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 365 at 83.3% on time.
Best time to fly LIT to DEN: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.5%, against 80.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
80.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,556 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.70%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
83.3% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 1,572 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LIT to DEN
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 83.3% | 70 min | 1.10% | B |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 102 | 83.2% | 69 min | 0.98% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 985 | 79.3% | 77 min | 0.61% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 120 | 77.5% | 110 min | 0.00% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 83.3%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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.
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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 | 82.4% | 83.3% | 1.10% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. LIT → DENLittle Rock to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 78.8% | 79.3% | 0.61% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OO 4686 13:35 |
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 21 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am469 flights85.8%
- 11am–2pm524 flights88.4%
- 2pm–5pm468 flights67.2%
- 5pm–8pm61 flights70.5%
- 8pm–5am50 flights80.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 88.4% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 67.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 524 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LIT to DEN by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On LIT to DEN, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 88.4% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 67.2%, a wide gap of 21.2 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am85.8%
- 11am–2pm88.4%
- 2–5pm67.2%
- 5–8pm70.5%
- 8pm–5am80.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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.
August is the worst month at 63.6% on time, 31 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.6%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,623 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 23,933 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, 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 actually costs
8.2% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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.
The return leg runs 82.6% on time across 1,574 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 1,572 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 August 63.6%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,556 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LIT to DEN questions
How often is LIT to DEN delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.7% of the 1,572 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LIT to DEN?
Southwest Airlines leads at 83.3% on time across 365 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 79.3%, a gap of 4 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 88.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 67.2%, 21 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 August delays on LIT to DEN?
August is the weakest month at 63.6% on time, compared with 94.5% in November. Across the year that is 31 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 DEN83.3%
- United Airlines on LIT to DEN83.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on LIT to DEN79.3%
- Frontier Airlines on LIT to DEN77.5%
- LIT to DFW, a related route76.4%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- LIT to ATL, a related route88.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record83.3%
- United Airlines on-time record83.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.