Carrier route record

F9DEN→CLE

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Cleveland

Flights: 296
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 16%
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 CLE earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 296 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 941 at 81.0% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's DEN to CLE record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 65 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 290 completed flights

Avg delay

49 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.01%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.5%

Every carrier on DEN to CLE, 1,842 flights

These figures cover 296 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on DEN to CLE

Frontier flew 296 of the 1,842 flights on DEN to CLE, about 16% of it. Its 84.1% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 84.1% to Southwest at 62.6%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 81.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 62.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 605 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to CLE
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	296	84.1%	49 min	1.01%	B
United Airlines	941	81.0%	65 min	0.11%	B+
Southwest Airlines	605	62.6%	55 min	0.33%	D+

The spread between United and Southwest is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Flight by flight

Frontier flight numbers on DEN to CLE

F9 191806:0086.0% · 255 flights

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 14 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am138 flights90.6%
8am–11am7 flights—
11am–2pm57 flights83.3%
2pm–5pm53 flights76.5%
5pm–8pm21 flights—
8pm–5am20 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.6% of the time, against 76.5% for the afternoon window. That is 14 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 138 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to CLE through the year

Jul–Sep 202581 flights79.2%
Oct–Dec 202576 flights77.0%
Jan–Mar 202656 flights87.5%
Apr–Jun 202683 flights92.8%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. 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 84.1% on time across 296 flights.

Frontier on DEN to CLE did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 92.8% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 77.0%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 74 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 94.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.0%. 20 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 47% of the 2,271 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
47%
Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
15%

47% 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 2,271 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 2,271 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 863 of the 2,271 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.01%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 1,201 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 70.2% on time across 294 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 296 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 CLE

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 296 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 84.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 290 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