Carrier route record

F9DEN→ELP

Frontier Airlines · Denver to El Paso

Flights: 348
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 19%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. 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 348 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 729 at 78.8% on time.

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

80.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 347 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.29%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

74.8%

Every carrier on DEN to ELP, 1,872 flights

These figures cover 348 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on DEN to ELP

Frontier flew 348 of the 1,872 flights on DEN to ELP, about 19% of it. Its 80.1% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 80.1% to Southwest at 68.8%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 78.8% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 68.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 795 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
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	348	80.1%	66 min	0.29%	B+
United Airlines	729	78.8%	62 min	0.41%	B+
Southwest Airlines	795	68.8%	56 min	0.25%	C+

United leads Southwest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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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 348 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am82 flights81.7%
11am–2pm115 flights82.6%
2pm–5pm143 flights76.1%
5pm–8pm8 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 82.6% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 76.1%. 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 143 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to ELP through the year

Jul–Sep 202525 flights—
Oct–Dec 202587 flights77.0%
Jan–Mar 202688 flights81.6%
Apr–Jun 202686 flights83.7%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights72.6%

Scale runs 65% 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 80.1% on time across 348 flights.

Frontier on DEN to ELP did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 83.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 72.6%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 87 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 73.1%, a spread of 18 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

Frontier on DEN to ELP often beats the schedule: 112 of 347 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 69 late arrivals split 25 under half an hour, 15 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 29 an hour or more.

15+ min early112 flights32.3%
Within 15 min166 flights47.8%
15–29 min late25 flights7.2%
30–59 min late15 flights4.3%
1–2 hours late19 flights5.5%
2+ hours late10 flights2.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 347 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

14 of 71 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on DEN to ELP

The latest arrival of the period was on 12 March 2026, 6 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on DEN to ELP in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
12 March 2026	6 hours 5 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
19 December 2025	3 hours 45 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
20 July 2026	3 hours 1 minute	Carrier
7 August 2026	2 hours 53 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
6 July 2026	2 hours 49 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 4,534 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
35%
Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
23%
Extreme weather
9%

35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,534 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 4,534 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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

8.4% 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 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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.7% on time across 348 flights, 3 points below 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 348 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. 348 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 80.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 347 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