Carrier route record
WNOMA→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Omaha to Denver
- Flights
- 1,404
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on OMA to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,404 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 386 at 89.5% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on OMA to DEN runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 63 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,392 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.1%
Every carrier on OMA to DEN, 3,289 flights
These figures cover 1,404 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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
Southwest against every carrier on OMA to DEN
Southwest flew 1,404 of the 3,289 flights on OMA to DEN, about 43% of it. Its 71.3% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 89.5% to Frontier at 69.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 89.5% of the time; United Airlines manages 78.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,286 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 386 | 89.5% | 90 min | 0.78% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,286 | 78.4% | 73 min | 0.54% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,404 | 71.3% | 59 min | 0.64% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 213 | 69.0% | 120 min | 0.00% | C+ |
SkyWest leads United by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 37 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights93.1%
- 8am–11am96 flights75.0%
- 11am–2pm240 flights70.8%
- 2pm–5pm254 flights61.8%
- 5pm–8pm338 flights55.8%
- 8pm–5am111 flights66.7%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.8% on time, against 93.1% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on OMA to DEN through the year
June is the worst month at 49.2% on time, 38 points below January, the best at 87.3%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 145 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 77.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 62.7%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 23,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 11%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
53% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 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 23,347 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 7,954 minutes out of 23,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.64%, 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.1% 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.
At 472 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 72.5% on time across 1,404 flights, within about a point 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 1,404 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.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on OMA to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 87.3% on time and June 49.2%, a swing of 38 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,392 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- OMA to DEN, every carrier
- Southwest on DEN to OMA, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on OMA to DEN89.5%
- United Airlines on OMA to DEN78.4%
- Frontier Airlines on OMA to DEN69.0%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.