Carrier route record
WNLIT→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Little Rock to Denver
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on LIT to DEN lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's LIT to DEN record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.3%
Every carrier on LIT to DEN, 1,570 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 LIT to DEN
Southwest flew 365 of the 1,570 flights on LIT to DEN, about 23% of it. Its 81.9% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.4% to Frontier at 74.8%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 85.4% | 58 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 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+ |
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 39 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–8am—
- 8am–11am101 flights94.0%
- 11am–2pm180 flights87.5%
- 2pm–5pm83 flights54.9%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 94.0% of the time, against 54.9% for the afternoon window. That is 39 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 180 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on LIT to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 46.7% on time, 47 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 92.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 72.5%. 20 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 5,292 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 5,292 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 5,292 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 1,885 minutes out of 5,292, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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. 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.2% on time across 365 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. 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 81.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 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
- SkyWest Airlines on LIT to DEN75.7%
- Frontier Airlines on LIT to DEN74.8%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.