Flight number record
F9 686
Frontier Airlines · Denver to Washington
- Route
- DEN → DCA
- Departs
- 07:35
- Flights
- 313
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s F9 686, check with Frontier Airlines.
F9 686 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 15 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 45 minutes. That rests on 313 flights, with a median arrival 17 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, F9 686's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 153 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
92.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 311 completed flights
Avg delay
45 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.64%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 313 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 17 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Schedule
When F9 686 flies
F9 686 flies DEN to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:35, used on 84 of 313 flights, with 07:30 (70 flights) next.
- Departs 07:3584 flights26.8%
- Departs 07:3070 flights22.4%
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 07:35 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and F9 686 runs 3 points better at 92.6%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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.
Against the route
F9 686 next to DEN to DCA
Every carrier on DEN to DCA combined arrived on time 80.6% of the time across 1,347 flights, so F9 686 is 12 points ahead of it. Frontier flew 983 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.5% on time. Across its whole network Frontier Airlines managed 72.7%, which this flight beats by 20 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9 686thin sample | 313 | 92.6% | 45 min | 0.64% | A+ |
| All Frontier Airlines on DEN–DCA | 983 | 77.5% | 72 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–DCA | 1,347 | 80.6% | 70 min | 0.67% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines, whole network | 213,022 | 72.7% | 84 min | 2.05% | C |
Across the year
F9 686 quarter by quarter
F9 686 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 97.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 84.6%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 78 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 202524 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202578 flights97.4%
- Jan–Mar 202682 flights92.5%
- Apr–Jun 202677 flights92.2%
- Jul–Sep 202652 flights84.6%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, F9 686 ranged from 88.0% on Thursday to 97.5% on Wednesday. With about 45 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.
Arrival by arrival
How late F9 686 runs when it is late
F9 686 often beats the schedule: 166 of 311 completed flights, 53%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 23 late arrivals split 10 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 3 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early166 flights53.4%
- Within 15 min122 flights39.2%
- 15–29 min late10 flights3.2%
- 30–59 min late10 flights3.2%
- 1–2 hours late1 flights0.3%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 311 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 23 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 7 still arrived on time. 7 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for F9 686
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 January 2026, 2 hours 31 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 January 2026 | 2 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 2 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 April 2026 | 1 hour 59 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 June 2026 | 59 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 29 December 2025 | 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why F9 686 runs late
Carrier accounts for 52% of the 1,041 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Carrier
- 38%National Airspace System
- 9%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 546 of the 1,041 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,041 delay minutes reported on F9 686.
Cancellations are rare at 0.64%, 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 1.0% 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 313 flights under F9 686 in the data flew DEN to DCA. 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. 313 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 686
For a booking, F9 686 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 92.6% on time and 0.64% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to DCA, every carrier and departure
- DCA to DEN, the return direction
- Frontier Airlines 690 on the same route65.7%
- Frontier Airlines 688 on the same route76.0%
- United Airlines 789 on the same route90.9%
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
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.