Carrier route record

F9DEN→LIT

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Little Rock

Flights: 120
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on DEN to LIT lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 120 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 986 at 85.7% on time.

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

77.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 120 completed flights

Avg delay

91 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

82.6%

Every carrier on DEN to LIT, 1,574 flights

These figures cover 120 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% 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 LIT

Frontier flew 120 of the 1,574 flights on DEN to LIT, about 8% of it. Its 77.5% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.7% to United at 63.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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	986	85.7%	78 min	0.61%	A+
Southwest Airlines	365	81.3%	43 min	0.55%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	120	77.5%	91 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlinesthin sample	103	63.7%	81 min	0.97%	D+

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 85.7%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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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 120 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 77.5% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to LIT through the year

Jul–Sep 202512 flights—
Oct–Dec 202530 flights76.7%
Jan–Mar 202620 flights—
Apr–Jun 202634 flights85.3%
Jul–Sep 202624 flights—

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 77.5% on time across 120 flights.

Split by quarter, Frontier on DEN to LIT logged 12 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 30 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 20 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 34 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 24 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 77.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Arrival by arrival

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

Frontier on DEN to LIT often beats the schedule: 46 of 120 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 27 late arrivals split 10 under half an hour, 6 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 11 an hour or more.

15+ min early46 flights38.3%
Within 15 min47 flights39.2%
15–29 min late10 flights8.3%
30–59 min late6 flights5.0%
1–2 hours late6 flights5.0%
2+ hours late5 flights4.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 120 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

6 of 26 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% 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 LIT.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on DEN to LIT

The latest arrival of the period was on 12 October 2025, 13 hours 6 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Four of the five worst days fell in October 2025.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on DEN to LIT in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
12 October 2025	13 hours 6 minutes	Carrier
10 October 2025	4 hours 29 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
27 October 2025	2 hours 48 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
7 June 2026	2 hours 36 minutes	Carrier
16 October 2025	2 hours 15 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 51% of the 2,456 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
51%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
0%

36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,456 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 to one. The split is drawn from 2,456 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,251 of the 2,456 delay minutes reported here.

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

9.2% 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 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.

The return leg runs 77.5% on time across 120 flights, within half 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. 120 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. 120 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 77.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 120 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