Carrier route record

F9DEN→CID

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Cedar Rapids

Flights: 169
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 15%
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 CID lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 169 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

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

On time

80.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 167 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.18%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.2%

Every carrier on DEN to CID, 1,104 flights

These figures cover 169 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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 DEN to CID

Frontier flew 169 of the 1,104 flights on DEN to CID, about 15% of it. Its 80.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 82.8% to United at 78.0%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to CID
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	207	82.8%	67 min	0.97%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	169	80.2%	60 min	1.18%	B
United Airlines	728	78.0%	84 min	0.69%	B+

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 169 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Frontier's DEN to CID record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 80.2% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to CID through the year

Jul–Sep 202552 flights73.1%
Oct–Dec 202548 flights80.9%
Jan–Mar 202632 flights77.4%
Apr–Jun 202637 flights91.9%

Scale runs 65% 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 80.2% on time across 169 flights.

Frontier on DEN to CID did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 91.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 73.1%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 42 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, Sunday is the strongest day at 87.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.0%. 8 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 1,987 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
27%
Extreme weather
8%

37% 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 1,987 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 1,987 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.18% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 692 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 76.6% on time across 169 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. 169 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 CID

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 169 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 80.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 167 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