Flight number record
F9 685
Frontier Airlines · Washington to Denver
- Route
- DCA → DEN
- Departs
- 07:00
- Flights
- 358
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s F9 685, check with Frontier Airlines.
F9 685 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 an hour. That rests on 358 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, F9 685's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 83 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.84%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 358 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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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Schedule
When F9 685 flies
F9 685 flies DCA to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 189 of 358 flights, with 08:00 (124 flights) next.
- Departs 07:00189 flights52.8%
- Departs 08:00124 flights34.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and F9 685 runs 4 points worse at 85.6%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
F9 685 next to DCA to DEN
Every carrier on DCA to DEN combined arrived on time 78.2% of the time across 1,347 flights, so F9 685 is 7 points ahead of it. Frontier flew 983 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.1% on time. Across its whole network Frontier Airlines managed 72.7%, which this flight beats by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9 685thin sample | 358 | 85.6% | 56 min | 0.84% | A+ |
| All Frontier Airlines on DCA–DEN | 983 | 78.1% | 81 min | 1.02% | B |
| All carriers on DCA–DEN | 1,347 | 78.2% | 82 min | 0.89% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines, whole network | 213,022 | 72.7% | 84 min | 2.05% | C |
Across the year
F9 685 quarter by quarter
F9 685 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 89.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 76.7%, a swing of 12 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.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights76.7%
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights81.6%
- Jan–Mar 202687 flights87.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights89.0%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights88.3%
Scale runs 70% to 95%.
By weekday, F9 685 did best on Thursday at 92.3% on time and worst on Tuesday at 79.6%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late F9 685 runs when it is late
F9 685 often beats the schedule: 126 of 354 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 51 late arrivals split 22 under half an hour, 23 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 6 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early126 flights35.6%
- Within 15 min177 flights50.0%
- 15–29 min late22 flights6.2%
- 30–59 min late23 flights6.5%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights0.8%
- 2+ hours late3 flights0.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 354 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
6 of 27 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. In the other direction, 30 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 F9 685
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 July 2026, 12 hours 46 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 July 2026 | 12 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 August 2026 | 3 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 January 2026 | 2 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 July 2026 | 1 hour 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 March 2026 | 1 hour 2 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why F9 685 runs late
Carrier accounts for 60% of the 2,877 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Carrier
- 37%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,717 of the 2,877 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,877 delay minutes reported on F9 685.
Cancellations are rare at 0.84%, 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 routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.7% 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 1,476 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.
Every one of the 358 flights under F9 685 in the data flew DCA to DEN. 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. 358 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 685
For a booking, F9 685 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.6% on time and 0.84% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to DCA, the return direction
- United Airlines 746 on the same route78.3%
- Frontier Airlines 687 on the same route80.7%
- Frontier Airlines 689 on the same route66.7%
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.