Carrier route record

F9DEN→XNA

Frontier Airlines · Denver to Bentonville

Flights: 145
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 11%
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 XNA lands a B+, 6 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 145 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 766 at 84.1% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's DEN to XNA record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 58 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 145 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.7%

Every carrier on DEN to XNA, 1,281 flights

These figures cover 145 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 XNA

Frontier flew 145 of the 1,281 flights on DEN to XNA, about 11% of it. Its 83.4% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 84.1% to United at 72.6%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 84.1% of the time; United Airlines manages 72.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 370 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to XNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	766	84.1%	56 min	0.65%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	145	83.4%	61 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	370	72.6%	73 min	0.54%	C+

SkyWest leads United by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 145 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am24 flights—
11am–2pm36 flights80.6%
2pm–5pm85 flights81.2%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 81.2% on time. The full set of windows spans half a point.

Across the year

Frontier on DEN to XNA through the year

Jul–Sep 202545 flights80.0%
Oct–Dec 202545 flights80.0%
Jan–Mar 202618 flights—
Apr–Jun 202637 flights91.9%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 83.4% on time across 145 flights.

Frontier on DEN to XNA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 91.9% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 80.0%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 48 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, Friday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 63.3%. 27 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 1,451 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
42%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
10%

42% 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 1,451 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 1,451 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 510 of the 1,451 delay minutes reported here.

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

7.6% 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 616 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 76.4% on time across 145 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 145 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 XNA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 145 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 83.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 145 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