Carrier route record
WNRIC→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Richmond to Denver
- Flights
- 290
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 35%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on RIC to DEN earns an F, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 50.3% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 27 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average about an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 290 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on RIC to DEN runs 27 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 270 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
50.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 286 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.03%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.5%
Every carrier on RIC to DEN, 818 flights
These figures cover 290 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% 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 RIC to DEN
Southwest flew 290 of the 818 flights on RIC to DEN, about 35% of it. Its 50.3% on time is 19 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.8% to Southwest at 50.3%. One 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 Airlines | 439 | 81.8% | 72 min | 0.91% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 71.9% | 71 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 290 | 50.3% | 60 min | 1.03% | F |
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 66 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am31 flights74.2%
- 8am–11am5 flights—
- 11am–2pm70 flights83.8%
- 2pm–5pm124 flights40.2%
- 5pm–8pm60 flights18.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 10% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 18.3% on time, against 83.8% for the 11am–2pm 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 124 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on RIC to DEN through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights76.7%
- Oct–Dec 202567 flights63.6%
- Jan–Mar 202657 flights65.5%
- Apr–Jun 202682 flights39.5%
- Jul–Sep 202654 flights20.4%
Scale runs 10% to 80%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 50.3% on time across 290 flights.
Southwest on RIC to DEN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 76.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 20.4%, a swing of 56 points on roughly 58 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 74.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 35.7%, a spread of 39 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on RIC to DEN runs when it is late
The 142 late arrivals split 46 under half an hour, 51 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 45 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early26 flights9.1%
- Within 15 min118 flights41.3%
- 15–29 min late46 flights16.1%
- 30–59 min late51 flights17.8%
- 1–2 hours late28 flights9.8%
- 2+ hours late17 flights5.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 286 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
24 of 144 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. In the other direction, 22 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DEN.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on RIC to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 March 2026, 4 hours 48 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across March, December, July and August, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 March 2026 | 4 hours 48 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 12 December 2025 | 4 hours 39 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 4 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 July 2026 | 3 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 August 2026 | 3 hours 31 minutes | National Airspace System |
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 8,550 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,550 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 8,550 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,907 of the 8,550 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.03% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.34%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
15.7% 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.
The 1,481 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 63.0% on time across 290 flights, 13 points above 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 290 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 RIC to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 290 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 50.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 286 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.