Carrier route record

F9BNA→DEN

Frontier Airlines · Nashville to Denver

Flights: 349
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on BNA to DEN lands a B, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 349 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,168 at 79.3% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on BNA to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

76.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 343 completed flights

Avg delay

87 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.43%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.9%

Every carrier on BNA to DEN, 3,665 flights

These figures cover 349 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on BNA to DEN

Frontier flew 349 of the 3,665 flights on BNA to DEN, about 10% of it. Its 76.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 79.3% to Southwest at 72.3%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 79.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 72.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,148 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on BNA to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	1,168	79.3%	77 min	0.77%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	349	76.1%	87 min	1.43%	B
Southwest Airlines	2,148	72.3%	51 min	0.42%	C+

United leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Frontier runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am114 flights82.1%
8am–11am6 flights—
11am–2pm30 flights—
2pm–5pm62 flights72.6%
5pm–8pm107 flights67.3%
8pm–5am30 flights76.7%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 82.1% of the time, against 67.3% for the evening window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 114 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on BNA to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 2025131 flights75.8%
Oct–Dec 202578 flights82.1%
Jan–Mar 202663 flights71.0%
Apr–Jun 202677 flights74.7%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 76.1% on time across 349 flights.

Frontier on BNA to DEN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 82.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 71.0%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 87 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.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.9%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 7,141 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
42%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
2%

42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 7,141 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 7,141 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 2,446 of the 7,141 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 1,013 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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.4% on time across 348 flights, 4 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 349 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 Frontier on BNA to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 349 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 76.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 343 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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