Carrier route record
WNOMA→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Omaha to Denver
- Flights
- 1,384
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,384 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 425 at 85.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on OMA to DEN runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 55 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,371 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.51%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.8%
Every carrier on OMA to DEN, 3,325 flights
These figures cover 1,384 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on OMA to DEN
Southwest flew 1,384 of the 3,325 flights on OMA to DEN, about 42% of it. Its 71.8% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.0% to Frontier at 69.7%. 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 85.0% of the time; United Airlines manages 78.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,284 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 425 | 85.0% | 80 min | 0.71% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,284 | 78.2% | 74 min | 0.47% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,384 | 71.8% | 62 min | 0.51% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 232 | 69.7% | 119 min | 0.43% | C+ |
SkyWest leads United by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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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 41 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am366 flights93.9%
- 8am–11am102 flights75.5%
- 11am–2pm212 flights74.3%
- 2pm–5pm266 flights62.0%
- 5pm–8pm365 flights53.3%
- 8pm–5am73 flights75.3%
Scale runs 45% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.3% on time, against 93.9% 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 366 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 133 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 63.6%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on OMA to DEN runs when it is late
The 387 late arrivals split 147 under half an hour, 116 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 124 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early201 flights14.7%
- Within 15 min783 flights57.1%
- 15–29 min late147 flights10.7%
- 30–59 min late116 flights8.5%
- 1–2 hours late70 flights5.1%
- 2+ hours late54 flights3.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,371 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
67 of 389 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 65 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on OMA to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 March 2026, 7 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 March 2026 | 7 hours 23 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 March 2026 | 7 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 June 2026 | 5 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 July 2026 | 5 hours | National Airspace System |
| 3 August 2026 | 4 hours 17 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 12%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
57% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 to one. The split is drawn from 23,832 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, 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 costs
9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 73.6% on time across 1,385 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 1,384 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. 1,371 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 DEN85.0%
- United Airlines on OMA to DEN78.2%
- Frontier Airlines on OMA to DEN69.7%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Eppley Airfield (OMA) delay statistics
- 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.