Carrier route record

F9DEN→DSM

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Des Moines

Flights: 153
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
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 DSM lands a B+, 2 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 153 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 936 at 88.2% on time.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 88.2% on time across 936 flights.

On time

79.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 153 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.9%

Every carrier on DEN to DSM, 2,329 flights

These figures cover 153 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 DSM

Frontier flew 153 of the 2,329 flights on DEN to DSM, about 7% of it. Its 79.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.2% to Southwest at 67.2%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 88.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 67.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 559 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to DSM
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	936	88.2%	71 min	1.07%	A
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	153	79.7%	58 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	681	79.1%	74 min	0.15%	B+
Southwest Airlines	559	67.2%	64 min	0.36%	C+

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 21 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am27 flights—
11am–2pm55 flights89.1%
2pm–5pm60 flights68.3%
5pm–8pm11 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% 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 89.1% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 68.3%. 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 60 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to DSM through the year

Jul–Sep 202538 flights73.7%
Oct–Dec 202549 flights85.7%
Jan–Mar 202635 flights65.7%
Apr–Jun 202631 flights93.5%

Scale runs 55% 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 79.7% on time across 153 flights.

Frontier on DEN to DSM did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 93.5% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 65.7%, a swing of 28 points on roughly 38 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, Friday is the strongest day at 79.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 74.5%. 5 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. Carrier accounts for 49% of the 1,805 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.

Carrier
49%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
2%

34% 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 1,805 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 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 1,805 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 880 of the 1,805 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% 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

6.5% 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 589 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 runs 77.8% on time across 153 flights, within 2 points 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. 153 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 DSM

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 153 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 79.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 153 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