Carrier route record
F9DEN→MSY
Frontier Airlines · Denver to New Orleans
- Flights
- 195
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- 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 MSY 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 195 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,017 at 84.4% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's DEN to MSY record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 191 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.8%
Every carrier on DEN to MSY, 2,270 flights
These figures cover 195 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 MSY
Frontier flew 195 of the 2,270 flights on DEN to MSY, about 9% of it. Its 82.2% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.4% to Southwest at 68.6%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 84.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 68.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,058 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,017 | 84.4% | 59 min | 0.20% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 195 | 82.2% | 68 min | 2.05% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,058 | 68.6% | 52 min | 0.47% | 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am29 flights—
- 11am–2pm80 flights76.6%
- 2pm–5pm43 flights86.0%
- 5pm–8pm31 flights86.7%
- 8pm–5am12 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 76.6% on time against 86.7% for 5pm–8pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 80 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DEN to MSY through the year
- Jul–Sep 202514 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202556 flights78.2%
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights85.1%
- Apr–Jun 202651 flights85.4%
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 82.2% on time across 195 flights.
Quarter by quarter Frontier on DEN to MSY held fairly steady: 78.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 85.1% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 85.4% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.5%. 20 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. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 2,297 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
41% 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 2,297 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 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 2,297 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 984 of the 2,297 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.05% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.3% 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 1,062 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 74.3% on time across 195 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. 195 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 MSY
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 195 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 82.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 191 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to MSY, every carrier
- Frontier on MSY to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to MSY84.4%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to MSY68.6%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.