Carrier route record

F9DEN→ELP

Frontier Airlines · Denver to El Paso

Flights: 339
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 18%
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 ELP lands a B+, 3 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 339 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 698 at 77.6% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on DEN to ELP from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

81.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 337 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.59%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.0%

Every carrier on DEN to ELP, 1,849 flights

These figures cover 339 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 ELP

Frontier flew 339 of the 1,849 flights on DEN to ELP, about 18% of it. Its 81.0% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.1% to Southwest at 69.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 77.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 69.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 781 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to ELP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	31	87.1%	72 min	0.00%	A+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	339	81.0%	64 min	0.59%	B+
United Airlines	698	77.6%	57 min	0.57%	B+
Southwest Airlines	781	69.7%	56 min	0.13%	C+

United leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Frontier runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 339 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am111 flights80.9%
11am–2pm125 flights80.0%
2pm–5pm95 flights80.9%
5pm–8pm8 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 80.9% on time. The full set of windows spans about a point.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to ELP through the year

Jul–Sep 202578 flights81.8%
Oct–Dec 202587 flights77.0%
Jan–Mar 202688 flights81.6%
Apr–Jun 202686 flights83.7%

Scale runs 70% 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 81.0% on time across 339 flights.

Quarter by quarter Frontier on DEN to ELP held fairly steady: 81.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 77.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 81.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 83.7% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 75.0%. 16 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 44% of the 4,079 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
Carrier
37%
National Airspace System
18%
Extreme weather
1%

44% 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 4,079 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 4,079 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 1,508 of the 4,079 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, below the national 1.81% 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

7.7% 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 563 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 78.6% on time across 339 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. 339 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 ELP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 339 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 81.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 337 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