Carrier route record

F9DEN→CMH

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Columbus

Flights: 125
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on DEN to CMH lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 125 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 728 at 83.1% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Frontier on DEN to CMH from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 125 completed flights

Avg delay

91 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

72.9%

Every carrier on DEN to CMH, 1,776 flights

These figures cover 125 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.

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Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on DEN to CMH

Frontier flew 125 of the 1,776 flights on DEN to CMH, about 7% of it. Its 80.8% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.1% to Southwest at 63.9%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 83.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 63.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 923 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to CMH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	728	83.1%	65 min	0.69%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	125	80.8%	91 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines	923	63.9%	53 min	0.87%	D+

The spread between United and Southwest is 19 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 19 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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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 10 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am7 flights—
11am–2pm53 flights88.7%
2pm–5pm65 flights78.5%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

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

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 88.7% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 78.5%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 65 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to CMH through the year

Jul–Sep 202512 flights—
Oct–Dec 202530 flights86.7%
Jan–Mar 202620 flights—
Apr–Jun 202636 flights83.3%
Jul–Sep 202627 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 90%. 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 80.8% on time across 125 flights.

Split by quarter, Frontier on DEN to CMH logged 12 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 30 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 20 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 36 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 27 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 80.8% annual figure is the one to use.

Arrival by arrival

How late Frontier on DEN to CMH runs when it is late

Frontier on DEN to CMH often beats the schedule: 54 of 125 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 24 late arrivals split 6 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 8 an hour or more.

15+ min early54 flights43.2%
Within 15 min47 flights37.6%
15–29 min late6 flights4.8%
30–59 min late10 flights8.0%
1–2 hours late7 flights5.6%
2+ hours late1 flights0.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 125 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 22 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 2 made it up before arrival. 4 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on DEN to CMH

The latest arrival of the period was on 1 June 2026, 17 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on DEN to CMH in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
1 June 2026	17 hours 2 minutes	Carrier
12 March 2026	1 hour 56 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
19 January 2026	1 hour 44 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
15 July 2026	1 hour 24 minutes	Carrier
5 September 2025	1 hour 20 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 62% of the 2,180 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
62%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
National Airspace System
9%
Extreme weather
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 62%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,354 of the 2,180 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,180 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.0% on time across 125 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 125 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 CMH

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 125 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 80.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 125 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures