Carrier route record
F9DEN→CVG
Frontier Airlines · Denver to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 402
- 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 DEN to CVG lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 402 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 CVG from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 398 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.6%
Every carrier on DEN to CVG, 1,520 flights
These figures cover 402 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 CVG
Frontier flew 402 of the 1,520 flights on DEN to CVG, about 26% of it. Its 77.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.7% to Southwest at 67.6%. 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 | 82.7% | 54 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 402 | 77.4% | 70 min | 1.00% | B |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 26 | 73.1% | 72 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 364 | 67.6% | 50 min | 1.37% | C |
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 25 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–8am39 flights89.7%
- 8am–11am64 flights78.1%
- 11am–2pm31 flights—
- 2pm–5pm82 flights84.0%
- 5pm–8pm63 flights88.9%
- 8pm–5am123 flights65.0%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.7% of the time, against 65.0% for the overnight window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 123 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DEN to CVG through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025127 flights66.1%
- Oct–Dec 2025119 flights79.0%
- Jan–Mar 202671 flights81.4%
- Apr–Jun 202685 flights88.2%
Scale runs 60% 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 77.4% on time across 402 flights.
Frontier on DEN to CVG did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 88.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 66.1%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 101 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 86.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.6%. 13 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 6,294 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
- 30%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 3%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 6,294 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 6,294 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 89.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 9.8% 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 82.1% on time across 403 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 402 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 CVG
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 402 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 77.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 398 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to CVG, every carrier
- Frontier on CVG to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to CVG82.7%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to CVG67.6%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) 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.