Flight number record

F9 686

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Washington

Route: DEN → DCA
Departs: 07:35
Flights: 314
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s F9 686, check with Frontier Airlines.

F9 686 earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 17 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 314 flights, with a median arrival 19 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, F9 686's record is 17 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 170 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

94.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 312 completed flights

Avg delay

56 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.64%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

1.3%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 314 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 19 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 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 314 flights, with 06:38 (59 flights) and 06:45 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:3584 flights26.8%
Departs 06:3859 flights18.8%
Departs 06:4541 flights13.1%

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 07:35 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 5 points better at 94.6%. 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 686 next to DEN to DCA

Every carrier on DEN to DCA combined arrived on time 81.2% of the time across 1,351 flights, so F9 686 is 13 points ahead of it. Frontier flew 986 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 21 points.

F9 686 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
F9 686thin sample	314	94.6%	56 min	0.64%	A+
All Frontier Airlines on DEN–DCA	986	78.4%	76 min	0.81%	B+
All carriers on DEN–DCA	1,351	81.2%	73 min	0.67%	B+
Frontier Airlines, whole network	205,332	73.2%	84 min	1.85%	C

Across the year

F9 686 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter F9 686 held fairly steady: 96.1% in Jul–Sep 2025, 97.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 92.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 92.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202577 flights96.1%
Oct–Dec 202578 flights97.4%
Jan–Mar 202682 flights92.5%
Apr–Jun 202677 flights92.2%

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, F9 686 did best on Wednesday at 100.0% on time and worst on Thursday at 88.0%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why F9 686 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 52% of the 950 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
52%
National Airspace System
29%
Late-arriving aircraft
19%

The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 497 of the 950 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 950 delay minutes reported on F9 686.

Cancellations are rare at 0.64%, 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 1.3% 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 314 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. 314 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: 94.6% on time and 0.64% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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