Carrier route record

WNMAF→DEN

Southwest Airlines · Midland to Denver

Flights: 275
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 18%
Carriers: 2

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

Southwest on MAF to DEN earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 18 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 45 minutes. That rests on 275 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's MAF to DEN record is 18 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 183 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

95.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 272 completed flights

Avg delay

46 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.09%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

84.0%

Every carrier on MAF to DEN, 1,500 flights

These figures cover 275 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 MAF to DEN

Southwest flew 275 of the 1,500 flights on MAF to DEN, about 18% of it. Its 95.6% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 95.6% to SkyWest at 81.4%.

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 MAF to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	275	95.6%	46 min	1.09%	A
SkyWest Airlines	1,225	81.4%	94 min	0.90%	B+

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Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 275 flights.

5am–8am208 flights98.0%
8am–11am13 flights—
11am–2pm13 flights—
2pm–5pm33 flights93.9%
5pm–8pm8 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 98.0% on time for the 5am–8am window against 93.9% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 208 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on MAF to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 202521 flights—
Oct–Dec 202549 flights95.9%
Jan–Mar 202661 flights100.0%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights97.8%
Jul–Sep 202653 flights86.5%

Scale runs 80% 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 95.6% on time across 275 flights.

Southwest on MAF to DEN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 100.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 86.5%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 69 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, Friday is the strongest day at 100.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 89.8%, a spread of 10 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Southwest on MAF to DEN runs when it is late

Southwest on MAF to DEN often beats the schedule: 101 of 272 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 7 of the 12 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 2 reached an hour or more.

15+ min early101 flights37.1%
Within 15 min159 flights58.5%
15–29 min late7 flights2.6%
30–59 min late3 flights1.1%
1–2 hours late1 flights0.4%
2+ hours late1 flights0.4%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 272 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Only 9 of 272 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.

The worst days

Worst days for Southwest on MAF to DEN

The latest arrival of the period was on 5 July 2026, 4 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across July, May, October and August, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Southwest on MAF to DEN in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
5 July 2026	4 hours 5 minutes	Carrier
26 May 2026	1 hour 17 minutes	Extreme weather
27 October 2025	41 minutes	Extreme weather
17 August 2026	31 minutes	National Airspace System
23 August 2026	30 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 46% of the 551 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
46%
Extreme weather
20%
National Airspace System
18%
Late-arriving aircraft
17%

Extreme weather accounts for 20% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 551 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 253 of the 551 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 0.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.

The 563 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 57.4% on time across 275 flights, 38 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 38 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 275 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 MAF to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 275 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 95.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 272 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures