Carrier route record

F9DEN→OMA

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Omaha

Flights: 213
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 OMA sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 213 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 385 at 89.0% on time.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 89.0% on time across 385 flights.

On time

70.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 212 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.8%

Every carrier on DEN to OMA, 3,289 flights

These figures cover 213 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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 OMA

Frontier flew 213 of the 3,289 flights on DEN to OMA, about 6% of it. Its 70.3% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 89.0% to Frontier at 70.3%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 89.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 72.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,404 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to OMA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	385	89.0%	60 min	0.78%	A+
United Airlines	1,287	76.5%	64 min	0.31%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,404	72.5%	53 min	0.43%	C+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	213	70.3%	72 min	0.00%	C+

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 17 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 17 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 213 flights.

5am–8am1 flights—
8am–11am13 flights—
11am–2pm12 flights—
2pm–5pm57 flights75.4%
5pm–8pm130 flights69.8%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 75.4% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 69.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 130 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to OMA through the year

Jul–Sep 202554 flights72.2%
Oct–Dec 202551 flights74.5%
Jan–Mar 202639 flights64.1%
Apr–Jun 202669 flights69.1%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. 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 70.3% on time across 213 flights.

Frontier on DEN to OMA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 74.5% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 64.1%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 53 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 62% of the 4,522 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
62%
Carrier
20%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
7%

62% 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 4,522 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 4,522 reported delay minutes.

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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.3% 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.

At 472 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 69.0% on time across 213 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 213 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 OMA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 213 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 70.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 212 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