Carrier route record
F9DEN→MSP
Frontier Airlines · Denver to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 618
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DEN to MSP sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 618 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,805 at 81.1% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.1% on time across 1,805 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 615 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.6%
Every carrier on DEN to MSP, 5,848 flights
These figures cover 618 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 MSP
Frontier flew 618 of the 5,848 flights on DEN to MSP, about 11% of it. Its 71.7% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.7% to Frontier at 71.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 72.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,724 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 244 | 88.7% | 78 min | 2.46% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,805 | 81.1% | 73 min | 0.89% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,457 | 79.9% | 68 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,724 | 72.7% | 50 min | 0.58% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 618 | 71.7% | 62 min | 0.49% | C+ |
Delta leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on DEN to MSP
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 34 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am127 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am40 flights87.5%
- 11am–2pm7 flights—
- 2pm–5pm81 flights74.7%
- 5pm–8pm110 flights56.4%
- 8pm–5am253 flights65.1%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.4% on time, against 90.6% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 253 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DEN to MSP through the year
July is the worst month at 52.1% on time, 35 points below April, the best at 86.8%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 76.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 61.8%. 15 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 52% of the 11,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
52% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 10,803 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, 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. 12.2% 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 680 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 80.4% on time across 619 flights, 9 points above 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 618 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 MSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 618 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 71.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 615 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to MSP, every carrier
- Frontier on MSP to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to MSP88.7%
- Delta Air Lines on DEN to MSP81.1%
- United Airlines on DEN to MSP79.9%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to MSP72.7%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.