Carrier route record

F9DEN→CVG

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Cincinnati

Flights: 379
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 4

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

Frontier on DEN to CVG 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 about an hour on average. That rests on 379 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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.

On time

80.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 376 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.79%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

79.8%

Every carrier on DEN to CVG, 1,496 flights

These figures cover 379 flights between September 2025 and August 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.

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Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on DEN to CVG

Frontier flew 379 of the 1,496 flights on DEN to CVG, about 25% of it. Its 80.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.4% to Allegiant at 69.2%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to CVG
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	727	84.4%	60 min	0.41%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)	379	80.9%	60 min	0.79%	B+
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	364	70.2%	45 min	1.37%	C
Allegiant Airthin sample	26	69.2%	71 min	0.00%	C+

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am39 flights89.7%
8am–11am64 flights78.1%
11am–2pm3 flights—
2pm–5pm143 flights80.7%
5pm–8pm63 flights88.9%
8pm–5am67 flights70.1%

Scale runs 60% 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 70.1% for the overnight window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 143 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to CVG through the year

Jul–Sep 202543 flights76.7%
Oct–Dec 2025119 flights79.0%
Jan–Mar 202671 flights81.4%
Apr–Jun 202685 flights88.2%
Jul–Sep 202661 flights76.3%

Scale runs 70% to 95%.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 80.9% on time across 379 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 2026 at 76.3%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 76 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 84.4% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 73.7%, a spread of 11 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

Frontier on DEN to CVG often beats the schedule: 141 of 376 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 72 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 26 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 25 an hour or more.

15+ min early141 flights37.5%
Within 15 min163 flights43.4%
15–29 min late21 flights5.6%
30–59 min late26 flights6.9%
1–2 hours late16 flights4.3%
2+ hours late9 flights2.4%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 376 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

21 of 80 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. 13 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on DEN to CVG

The latest arrival of the period was on 25 January 2026, 3 hours 58 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on DEN to CVG in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
25 January 2026	3 hours 58 minutes	National Airspace System
30 June 2026	3 hours 8 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
21 December 2025	3 hours 1 minute	Late-arriving aircraft
7 June 2026	2 hours 44 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
30 July 2026	2 hours 20 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 4,340 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
27%
National Airspace System
21%
Extreme weather
6%

47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,340 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 4,340 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 are rare at 0.79%, below the national 1.89% 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

6.6% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

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.

The return leg runs 82.0% on time across 381 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 379 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. 379 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 80.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 376 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