Carrier route record

F9CMH→DEN

Frontier Airlines · Columbus to Denver

Flights: 117
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on CMH to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 117 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 729 at 81.9% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on CMH to DEN runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 86 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 116 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.85%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.2%

Every carrier on CMH to DEN, 1,768 flights

These figures cover 117 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% 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 CMH to DEN

Frontier flew 117 of the 1,768 flights on CMH to DEN, about 7% of it. Its 69.0% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.9% to Frontier at 69.0%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on CMH to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	729	81.9%	72 min	0.82%	B+
Southwest Airlines	922	78.4%	62 min	0.54%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	117	69.0%	81 min	0.85%	C+

No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 81.9%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When Frontier runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 117 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm1 flights—
2pm–5pm9 flights—
5pm–8pm50 flights62.0%
8pm–5am57 flights71.4%

Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.0% on time, against 71.4% for the 8pm–5am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 57 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on CMH to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 202531 flights53.3%
Oct–Dec 202530 flights70.0%
Jan–Mar 202620 flights—
Apr–Jun 202636 flights77.8%

Scale runs 45% to 85%. 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 69.0% on time across 117 flights.

Frontier on CMH to DEN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 77.8% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 53.3%, a swing of 25 points on roughly 39 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.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 67% of the 2,903 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
67%
National Airspace System
27%
Carrier
6%

67% 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 2,903 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 67 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 2,903 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.85%, 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 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. 11.2% 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 1,154 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 81.0% on time across 117 flights, 12 points above 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 12 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 117 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 CMH to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 117 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 69.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 116 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