Carrier route record

F9DEN→MEM

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Memphis

Flights: 139
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
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 MEM lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 139 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 728 at 81.0% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's DEN to MEM record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 138 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.72%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.7%

Every carrier on DEN to MEM, 1,333 flights

These figures cover 139 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 MEM

Frontier flew 139 of the 1,333 flights on DEN to MEM, about 10% of it. Its 82.6% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Southwest at 65.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 81.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 65.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 465 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to MEM
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	139	82.6%	61 min	0.72%	B+
United Airlines	728	81.0%	73 min	0.82%	B+
Southwest Airlines	465	65.3%	60 min	0.86%	C+

The spread between United and Southwest is 16 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 16 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 139 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Frontier's DEN to MEM record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 82.6% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to MEM through the year

Jul–Sep 202531 flights74.2%
Oct–Dec 202539 flights89.7%
Jan–Mar 202637 flights77.8%
Apr–Jun 202632 flights87.5%

Scale runs 65% 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 82.6% on time across 139 flights.

Frontier on DEN to MEM did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 89.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 74.2%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 35 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, Monday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.5%. 9 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 57% of the 1,472 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
57%
Carrier
18%
National Airspace System
18%
Extreme weather
8%

57% 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 1,472 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 1,472 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.72%, 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

6.5% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 872 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 74.6% on time across 139 flights, 8 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 8 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 MEM

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 82.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 138 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