Flight number record

F9 685

Frontier Airlines · Washington to Denver

Route: DCA → DEN
Departs: 07:00
Flights: 359
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s F9 685, check with Frontier Airlines.

F9 685 earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 359 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, F9 685's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 72 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 356 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.56%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 359 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.

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 190 of 359 flights, with 08:00 (124 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:00190 flights52.9%
Departs 08:00124 flights34.5%

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 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 5 points worse at 84.8%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

F9 685 next to DCA to DEN

Every carrier on DCA to DEN combined arrived on time 78.5% of the time across 1,349 flights, so F9 685 is 6 points ahead of it. Frontier flew 984 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.4% on time. Across its whole network Frontier Airlines managed 73.2%, which this flight beats by 12 points.

F9 685 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
F9 685thin sample	359	84.8%	52 min	0.56%	B+
All Frontier Airlines on DCA–DEN	984	78.4%	80 min	0.91%	B+
All carriers on DCA–DEN	1,349	78.5%	86 min	0.74%	B+
Frontier Airlines, whole network	205,332	73.2%	84 min	1.85%	C

Across the year

F9 685 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter F9 685 held fairly steady: 81.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 81.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 87.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 89.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights81.5%
Oct–Dec 202589 flights81.6%
Jan–Mar 202687 flights87.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights89.0%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, F9 685 ranged from 80.0% on Tuesday to 90.4% on Saturday. With about 51 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why F9 685 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 57% of the 2,800 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.

Carrier
57%
National Airspace System
39%
Extreme weather
3%

The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,609 of the 2,800 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,800 delay minutes reported on F9 685.

Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, below the national 1.81% 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 2.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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. 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 359 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. 359 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, read F9 685 as 84.8% on time with 0.56% cancelled over 359 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures