Flight number record
F9 2996
Frontier Airlines · Denver to Houston
- Route
- DEN → IAH
- Departs
- 21:06
- Flights
- 332
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s F9 2996, check with Frontier Airlines.
F9 2996 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 332 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so F9 2996 runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 47 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 332 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
11.1%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 332 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% 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.
Schedule
When F9 2996 flies
F9 2996 flies DEN to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:06, used on 111 of 332 flights, with 21:00 (53 flights) and 19:53 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 21:06111 flights33.4%
- Departs 21:0053 flights16.0%
- Departs 19:5335 flights10.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 21:06 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and F9 2996 runs 2 points better at 72.9%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
F9 2996 next to DEN to IAH
Every carrier on DEN to IAH combined arrived on time 78.2% of the time across 4,673 flights, so F9 2996 is 5 points behind it. Frontier flew 798 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.0% on time. Across its whole network Frontier Airlines managed 73.2%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9 2996thin sample | 332 | 72.9% | 68 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| All Frontier Airlines on DEN–IAH | 798 | 79.0% | 61 min | 0.13% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–IAH | 4,673 | 78.2% | 62 min | 0.21% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines, whole network | 205,332 | 73.2% | 84 min | 1.85% | C |
Across the year
F9 2996 quarter by quarter
F9 2996 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 82.8% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 49.4%, a swing of 33 points on roughly 83 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.
- Jul–Sep 202581 flights49.4%
- Oct–Dec 202587 flights82.8%
- Jan–Mar 202676 flights80.3%
- Apr–Jun 202688 flights78.4%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, F9 2996 did best on Wednesday at 84.0% on time and worst on Friday at 63.5%. Each day rests on about 47 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why F9 2996 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 72% of the 6,107 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.
- 72%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
72% 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 6,107 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 72 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 6,107 delay minutes reported on F9 2996.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.1% 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.
The 861 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
Every one of the 332 flights under F9 2996 in the data flew DEN to IAH. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 332 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 F9 2996
For a booking, F9 2996 is one of the weaker ways to fly DEN to IAH: 5 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to DEN, the return direction
- United Airlines 1720 on the same route89.6%
- United Airlines 320 on the same route96.4%
- United Airlines 475 on the same route73.6%
- United Airlines 2419 on the same route78.6%
- United Airlines 1829 on the same route69.9%
- United Airlines 489 on the same route75.2%
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on-time record
- Every Frontier Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
A flight number here means Frontier Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
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.