Carrier route record

WNSBA→DEN

Southwest Airlines · Santa Barbara to Denver

Flights: 287
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 27%
Carriers: 2

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

Southwest on SBA to DEN earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 287 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's SBA to DEN record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 80 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 285 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.70%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

85.5%

Every carrier on SBA to DEN, 1,058 flights

These figures cover 287 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 SBA to DEN

Southwest flew 287 of the 1,058 flights on SBA to DEN, about 27% of it. Its 85.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.5% to Southwest at 85.3%.

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 SBA to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	771	85.5%	70 min	0.65%	A+
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	287	85.3%	50 min	0.70%	A+

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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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am145 flights93.8%
8am–11am14 flights—
11am–2pm102 flights78.0%
2pm–5pm26 flights—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 78.0% on time against 93.8% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 145 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on SBA to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
Oct–Dec 202555 flights68.5%
Jan–Mar 202680 flights87.3%
Apr–Jun 202678 flights97.4%
Jul–Sep 202657 flights89.5%

Scale runs 60% 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 85.3% on time across 287 flights.

Southwest on SBA to DEN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 97.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 68.5%, a swing of 29 points on roughly 72 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 97.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 79.6%, a spread of 18 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

The 42 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.

15+ min early42 flights14.7%
Within 15 min201 flights70.5%
15–29 min late18 flights6.3%
30–59 min late12 flights4.2%
1–2 hours late10 flights3.5%
2+ hours late2 flights0.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 285 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 53 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 17 still arrived on time. 6 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Southwest on SBA to DEN

The latest arrival of the period was on 30 July 2026, 3 hours 35 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, November, December, February and October, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Southwest on SBA to DEN in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
30 July 2026	3 hours 35 minutes	Carrier
9 November 2025	3 hours 5 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
19 December 2025	1 hour 53 minutes	National Airspace System
17 February 2026	1 hour 50 minutes	National Airspace System
18 October 2025	1 hour 44 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 2,092 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
43%
National Airspace System
35%
Carrier
22%

43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,092 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 43 to one. The split is drawn from 2,092 reported delay minutes.

35% 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 724 minutes out of 2,092, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% 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 916 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 63.7% on time across 287 flights, 22 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 22 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 287 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 SBA to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 287 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 85.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 285 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