Flight number record
F9 690
Frontier Airlines · Denver to Washington
- Route
- DEN → DCA
- Departs
- 16:38
- Flights
- 358
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s F9 690, check with Frontier Airlines.
F9 690 draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 358 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so F9 690 runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 116 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 356 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
15.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 358 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When F9 690 flies
F9 690 flies DEN to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:38, used on 111 of 358 flights, with 16:27 (60 flights) and 16:28 (58 flights) next.
- Departs 16:38111 flights31.0%
- Departs 16:2760 flights16.8%
- Departs 16:2858 flights16.2%
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 16:38 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and F9 690 runs 6 points worse at 65.7%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
F9 690 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 690 is 15 points behind 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 trails by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9 690thin sample | 358 | 65.7% | 74 min | 0.28% | C+ |
| 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 690 quarter by quarter
F9 690 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 78.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 48.3%, a swing of 30 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 flights63.3%
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights78.7%
- Jan–Mar 202687 flights65.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights65.9%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights48.3%
Scale runs 40% to 85%.
By weekday, F9 690 did best on Saturday at 82.0% on time and worst on Monday at 58.5%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 24 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late F9 690 runs when it is late
F9 690 often beats the schedule: 125 of 356 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 122 late arrivals split 23 under half an hour, 43 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 56 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early125 flights35.1%
- Within 15 min109 flights30.6%
- 15–29 min late23 flights6.5%
- 30–59 min late43 flights12.1%
- 1–2 hours late39 flights11.0%
- 2+ hours late17 flights4.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 356 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
29 of 139 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for F9 690
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 January 2026, 6 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 January 2026 | 6 hours 5 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 30 April 2026 | 5 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 4 hours 58 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 16 August 2026 | 4 hours 34 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 14 September 2025 | 3 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why F9 690 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 53% of the 9,076 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%National Airspace System
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
53% 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 4,801 minutes out of 9,076, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,076 delay minutes reported on F9 690.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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
15.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 690 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. 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 690
For a booking, F9 690 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 15.7% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to DCA, every carrier and departure
- DCA to DEN, the return direction
- Frontier Airlines 686 on the same route92.6%
- 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.