Carrier route record

F9DEN→FSD

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Sioux Falls

Flights: 139
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 8%
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 FSD sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 139 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,313 at 85.5% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Frontier on DEN to FSD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

74.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 139 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

82.8%

Every carrier on DEN to FSD, 1,817 flights

These figures cover 139 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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 FSD

Frontier flew 139 of the 1,817 flights on DEN to FSD, about 8% of it. Its 74.8% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.5% to Frontier at 74.8%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 85.5% of the time; United Airlines manages 75.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 365 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to FSD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	1,313	85.5%	78 min	0.99%	A+
United Airlines	365	75.9%	86 min	1.10%	B
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	139	74.8%	77 min	0.00%	C+

SkyWest leads United 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 28 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am13 flights—
11am–2pm51 flights90.2%
2pm–5pm51 flights62.7%
5pm–8pm24 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% 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 90.2% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 62.7%. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 51 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to FSD through the year

Jul–Sep 202513 flights—
Oct–Dec 202540 flights70.0%
Jan–Mar 202627 flights—
Apr–Jun 202634 flights76.5%
Jul–Sep 202625 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 80%. 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 74.8% on time across 139 flights.

Split by quarter, Frontier on DEN to FSD logged 13 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 40 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 27 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 34 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 25 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 74.8% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.2%, a spread of 15 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

Frontier on DEN to FSD often beats the schedule: 57 of 139 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 35 late arrivals split 15 under half an hour, 8 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.

15+ min early57 flights41.0%
Within 15 min47 flights33.8%
15–29 min late15 flights10.8%
30–59 min late8 flights5.8%
1–2 hours late8 flights5.8%
2+ hours late4 flights2.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 139 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

5 of 33 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 7 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at FSD.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on DEN to FSD

The latest arrival of the period was on 6 April 2026, 13 hours 47 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across April, August and March, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on DEN to FSD in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
6 April 2026	13 hours 47 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
14 August 2026	2 hours 28 minutes	Extreme weather
10 August 2026	2 hours 27 minutes	Carrier
20 April 2026	2 hours 14 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
6 March 2026	1 hour 58 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 2,710 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
61%
Carrier
20%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
7%

61% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,710 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 2,710 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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

8.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 483 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.2% on time across 139 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 139 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 FSD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 139 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 74.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 139 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