Carrier route record

F9DEN→MSN

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Madison

Flights: 142
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on DEN to MSN lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five 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 142 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

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

On time

78.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 141 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.70%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.2%

Every carrier on DEN to MSN, 1,077 flights

These figures cover 142 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 MSN

Frontier flew 142 of the 1,077 flights on DEN to MSN, about 13% of it. Its 78.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 82.4% to Frontier at 78.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to MSN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	206	82.4%	39 min	0.49%	B+
United Airlines	729	80.0%	62 min	0.55%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	142	78.0%	66 min	0.70%	B+

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 142 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Frontier's DEN to MSN record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 78.0% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to MSN through the year

Jul–Sep 202545 flights73.3%
Oct–Dec 202548 flights75.0%
Jan–Mar 202618 flights—
Apr–Jun 202631 flights83.9%

Scale runs 65% 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 78.0% on time across 142 flights.

Frontier on DEN to MSN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 83.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 73.3%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 47 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.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 2,050 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
48%
Carrier
26%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
10%

48% 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 2,050 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 2,050 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, 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. 9.9% 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 826 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 67.4% on time across 141 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 142 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 MSN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 142 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 78.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 141 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