Carrier route record
F9CVG→DEN
Frontier Airlines · Cincinnati to Denver
- Flights
- 403
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on CVG to DEN lands a B, 5 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 403 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's CVG to DEN record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 45 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 397 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.6%
Every carrier on CVG to DEN, 1,521 flights
These figures cover 403 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 CVG to DEN
Frontier flew 403 of the 1,521 flights on CVG to DEN, about 26% of it. Its 82.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.8% to Southwest at 72.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 728 | 85.8% | 81 min | 0.69% | A+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 26 | 84.6% | 35 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 403 | 82.1% | 96 min | 1.24% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 364 | 72.3% | 60 min | 1.37% | C |
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on CVG to DEN
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 45 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am180 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am35 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm67 flights86.4%
- 2pm–5pm25 flights—
- 5pm–8pm42 flights44.7%
- 8pm–5am54 flights77.8%
Scale runs 35% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 44.7% on time, against 89.4% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 180 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on CVG to DEN through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025126 flights82.0%
- Oct–Dec 2025120 flights80.7%
- Jan–Mar 202671 flights78.6%
- Apr–Jun 202686 flights87.2%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 82.1% on time across 403 flights.
Quarter by quarter Frontier on CVG to DEN held fairly steady: 82.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 80.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 78.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 87.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.3%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 6,813 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
51% 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 6,813 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 6,813 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.
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. 9.1% 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 1,069 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 77.4% on time across 402 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 403 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 CVG to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 403 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 82.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 397 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to DEN, every carrier
- Frontier on DEN to CVG, the return leg
- United Airlines on CVG to DEN85.8%
- Southwest Airlines on CVG to DEN72.3%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.