Carrier route record
F9DEN→DTW
Frontier Airlines · Denver to Detroit
- Flights
- 486
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DEN to DTW lands a B, 2 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 486 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,247 at 86.8% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 86.8% on time across 1,247 flights.
Key figures
On time
79.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 480 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.23%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.1%
Every carrier on DEN to DTW, 3,109 flights
These figures cover 486 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on DEN to DTW
Frontier flew 486 of the 3,109 flights on DEN to DTW, about 16% of it. Its 79.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Southwest at 57.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 86.8% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 57.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 649 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,247 | 86.8% | 79 min | 0.32% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 726 | 80.5% | 63 min | 0.14% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 486 | 79.6% | 83 min | 1.23% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 649 | 57.2% | 52 min | 0.92% | D+ |
The spread between Delta and Southwest is 30 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 30 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 32 points, against 30 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am170 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am29 flights—
- 11am–2pm37 flights83.8%
- 2pm–5pm43 flights76.2%
- 5pm–8pm175 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am32 flights71.9%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.9% on time, against 94.7% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 175 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DEN to DTW through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 88.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.7%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on DEN to DTW runs when it is late
Frontier on DEN to DTW often beats the schedule: 190 of 480 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 98 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 26 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 46 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early190 flights39.6%
- Within 15 min192 flights40.0%
- 15–29 min late26 flights5.4%
- 30–59 min late26 flights5.4%
- 1–2 hours late26 flights5.4%
- 2+ hours late20 flights4.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 480 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
30 of 117 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. 11 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on DEN to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 1 June 2026, 15 hours 39 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 June 2026 | 15 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 August 2026 | 6 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 August 2026 | 3 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 August 2026 | 3 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 May 2026 | 3 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 71% of the 8,138 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 71%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
71% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,138 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 71 to one. The split is drawn from 8,138 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 94.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.23% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,123 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 82.5% on time across 486 flights, within 3 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. 486 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 DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 486 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 79.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 480 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to DTW, every carrier
- Frontier on DTW to DEN, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DEN to DTW86.8%
- United Airlines on DEN to DTW80.5%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to DTW57.2%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.