Carrier route record
F9DEN→RDU
Frontier Airlines · Denver to Raleigh
- Flights
- 296
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DEN to RDU earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 296 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 727 at 82.3% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's DEN to RDU record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 101 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 293 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.01%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.0%
Every carrier on DEN to RDU, 1,732 flights
These figures cover 296 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on DEN to RDU
Frontier flew 296 of the 1,732 flights on DEN to RDU, about 17% of it. Its 87.4% on time is 11 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 87.4% to Southwest at 64.8%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 82.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 64.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 709 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 296 | 87.4% | 56 min | 1.01% | A |
| United Airlines | 727 | 82.3% | 66 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 709 | 64.8% | 52 min | 0.85% | D+ |
The spread between United and Southwest is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on DEN to RDU
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 11 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am105 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am7 flights—
- 11am–2pm164 flights83.4%
- 2pm–5pm20 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. 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 83.4% on time against 94.2% for 5am–8am. 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 164 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DEN to RDU through the year
- Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202565 flights81.5%
- Jan–Mar 202664 flights88.7%
- Apr–Jun 202688 flights88.5%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights93.5%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. 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 87.4% on time across 296 flights.
Frontier on DEN to RDU did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 93.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 81.5%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 74 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 97.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.0%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on DEN to RDU runs when it is late
Frontier on DEN to RDU often beats the schedule: 119 of 293 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 37 late arrivals split 15 under half an hour, 9 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 13 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early119 flights40.6%
- Within 15 min137 flights46.8%
- 15–29 min late15 flights5.1%
- 30–59 min late9 flights3.1%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights3.4%
- 2+ hours late3 flights1.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 293 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 41 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 13 still arrived on time. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on DEN to RDU
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 March 2026, 3 hours 34 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 March 2026 | 3 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 February 2026 | 2 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 March 2026 | 2 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 December 2025 | 1 hour 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 November 2025 | 1 hour 48 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 48% of the 2,066 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Carrier
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,066 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 to one. The split is drawn from 2,066 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 988 of the 2,066 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,436 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.
The return leg runs 84.6% on time across 297 flights, within 3 points 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. 296 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 RDU
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 296 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 87.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 293 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to RDU, every carrier
- Frontier on RDU to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to RDU82.3%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to RDU64.8%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.