Flight number record
F9 687
Frontier Airlines · Washington to Denver
- Route
- DCA → DEN
- Departs
- 14:00
- Flights
- 320
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s F9 687, check with Frontier Airlines.
F9 687 lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 320 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, F9 687's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 63 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 317 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
6.3%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 320 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 687 flies
F9 687 flies DCA to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 14:00, used on 135 of 320 flights, with 13:00 (119 flights) and 13:59 (66 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 14:00135 flights42.2%
- Departs 13:00119 flights37.2%
- Departs 13:5966 flights20.6%
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 14:00 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and F9 687 runs 12 points better at 83.9%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
F9 687 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 687 is 5 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 11 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9 687thin sample | 320 | 83.9% | 56 min | 0.94% | 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 687 quarter by quarter
F9 687 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.4% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 70.1%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 80 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 202577 flights93.4%
- Oct–Dec 202581 flights87.7%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights84.3%
- Apr–Jun 202677 flights70.1%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, F9 687 did best on Saturday at 96.0% on time and worst on Wednesday at 75.7%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why F9 687 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 56% of the 2,863 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.
- 56%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
56% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,604 minutes out of 2,863, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,863 delay minutes reported on F9 687.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
6.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 320 flights under F9 687 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. 320 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 687
For a booking, read F9 687 as 83.9% on time with 0.94% cancelled over 320 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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 route78.8%
- Frontier Airlines 685 on the same route84.8%
- Frontier Airlines 689 on the same route65.1%
- 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
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.