Carrier route record
WNLIT→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Little Rock to Denver
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LIT to DEN lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's LIT to DEN record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 60 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.3%
Every carrier on LIT to DEN, 1,572 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on LIT to DEN
Southwest flew 365 of the 1,572 flights on LIT to DEN, about 23% of it. Its 83.3% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 83.3% to Frontier at 77.5%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 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+ |
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 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am105 flights94.2%
- 11am–2pm165 flights88.2%
- 2pm–5pm90 flights64.0%
- 5pm–8pm5 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 94.2% of the time, against 64.0% for the afternoon window. That is 30 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 165 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LIT to DEN through the year
August is the worst month at 53.3% on time, 40 points below March, the best at 93.5%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.6%, a spread of 24 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on LIT to DEN runs when it is late
Southwest on LIT to DEN often beats the schedule: 90 of 359 completed flights, 25%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 60 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 24 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 18 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early90 flights25.1%
- Within 15 min209 flights58.2%
- 15–29 min late18 flights5.0%
- 30–59 min late24 flights6.7%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights2.5%
- 2+ hours late9 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 359 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
22 of 74 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 30% of them. 8 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on LIT to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 May 2026, 5 hours 14 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across May, August, February, December and September, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 May 2026 | 5 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 August 2026 | 5 hours 4 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 16 February 2026 | 4 hours 39 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 December 2025 | 4 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 September 2025 | 3 hours 27 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 4,188 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,188 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 to one. The split is drawn from 4,188 reported delay minutes.
37% 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 1,532 minutes out of 4,188, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.0% 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 81.3% on time across 365 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 LIT to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 365 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 83.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 359 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LIT to DEN, every carrier
- Southwest on DEN to LIT, the return leg
- United Airlines on LIT to DEN83.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on LIT to DEN79.3%
- Frontier Airlines on LIT to DEN77.5%
- 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.