Carrier route record

F9DEN→BNA

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Nashville

Flights: 348
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 DEN to BNA sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 348 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,168 at 78.2% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on DEN to BNA runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 52 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.86%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.3%

Every carrier on DEN to BNA, 3,658 flights

These figures cover 348 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% 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 DEN to BNA

Frontier flew 348 of the 3,658 flights on DEN to BNA, about 10% of it. Its 72.4% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.2% to Frontier at 72.4%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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 DEN to BNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	1,168	78.2%	59 min	0.43%	B+
Southwest Airlines	2,142	72.6%	56 min	0.79%	C+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	348	72.4%	64 min	0.86%	C+

No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 78.2%, 6 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 37 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am34 flights93.9%
8am–11am37 flights80.6%
11am–2pm37 flights75.7%
2pm–5pm112 flights75.5%
5pm–8pm31 flights74.2%
8pm–5am97 flights56.7%

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.7% on time, against 93.9% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 112 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to BNA through the year

Jul–Sep 2025131 flights66.2%
Oct–Dec 202578 flights75.6%
Jan–Mar 202662 flights80.0%
Apr–Jun 202677 flights73.7%

Scale runs 60% 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 72.4% on time across 348 flights.

Frontier on DEN to BNA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 80.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 66.2%, a swing of 14 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 67.9%. 12 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 6,106 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
5%

41% 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 6,106 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 6,106 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 93.9% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, 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. 11.9% 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 76.1% on time across 349 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 348 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 DEN to BNA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 348 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 72.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 344 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