Carrier route record

F9DEN→LIT

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Little Rock

Flights: 116
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 LIT sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 116 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,048 at 81.1% on time.

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

On time

75.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 115 completed flights

Avg delay

94 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.86%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.4%

Every carrier on DEN to LIT, 1,571 flights

These figures cover 116 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on DEN to LIT

Frontier flew 116 of the 1,571 flights on DEN to LIT, about 7% of it. Its 75.7% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 81.1% to United at 59.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to LIT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	1,048	81.1%	88 min	0.76%	B+
Southwest Airlines	365	78.2%	49 min	0.55%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	116	75.7%	94 min	0.86%	B+
United Airlinesthin sample	42	59.5%	63 min	0.00%	D+

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 81.1%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 116 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Frontier's DEN to LIT record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 75.7% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to LIT through the year

Jul–Sep 202532 flights58.1%
Oct–Dec 202530 flights76.7%
Jan–Mar 202620 flights—
Apr–Jun 202634 flights85.3%

Scale runs 50% 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 75.7% on time across 116 flights.

Frontier on DEN to LIT did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 85.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 58.1%, a swing of 27 points on roughly 39 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, Sunday is the strongest day at 78.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.4%. 7 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 52% of the 2,620 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
52%
Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
1%

40% 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 2,620 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 2,620 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 1,356 of the 2,620 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 771 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 74.8% on time across 116 flights, within about a point 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. 116 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 LIT

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 116 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 75.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 115 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