Carrier route record

F9DEN→MCI

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Kansas City

Flights: 261
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
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 MCI lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 261 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 373 at 89.2% on time.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 89.2% on time across 373 flights.

On time

81.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 259 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.5%

Every carrier on DEN to MCI, 4,269 flights

These figures cover 261 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 MCI

Frontier flew 261 of the 4,269 flights on DEN to MCI, about 6% of it. Its 81.5% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 89.2% to Southwest at 71.1%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 89.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 71.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,338 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to MCI
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	373	89.2%	58 min	0.27%	A+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	261	81.5%	68 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	1,297	78.2%	66 min	0.39%	B+
Southwest Airlines	2,338	71.1%	56 min	0.47%	C+

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 16 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am37 flights89.2%
11am–2pm71 flights85.5%
2pm–5pm53 flights73.6%
5pm–8pm100 flights80.0%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.2% of the time, against 73.6% for the afternoon window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 100 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to MCI through the year

Jul–Sep 202545 flights70.5%
Oct–Dec 202573 flights90.4%
Jan–Mar 202660 flights73.3%
Apr–Jun 202683 flights85.4%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. 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 81.5% on time across 261 flights.

Frontier on DEN to MCI did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 90.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 70.5%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 65 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 86.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 74.5%. 12 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 55% of the 3,284 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
55%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
2%

55% 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 3,284 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 33 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 3,284 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.2% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% 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

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

The 533 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.8% on time across 261 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 261 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 MCI

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 261 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 81.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 259 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