Carrier route record
F9DFW→DEN
Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Denver
- Flights
- 1,126
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DFW to DEN lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,126 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,901 at 75.7% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on DFW to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,108 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.42%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.4%
Every carrier on DFW to DEN, 6,025 flights
These figures cover 1,126 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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 DFW to DEN
Frontier flew 1,126 of the 6,025 flights on DFW to DEN, about 19% of it. Its 77.7% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 91.3% to American at 61.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 75.7% of the time; American Airlines manages 61.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,951 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 91.3% | 213 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 24 | 87.5% | 56 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 1,126 | 77.7% | 84 min | 1.42% | B |
| United Airlines | 1,901 | 75.7% | 78 min | 1.21% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,951 | 61.7% | 71 min | 3.42% | D− |
American Airlines cancels 3.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on DFW to DEN
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 27 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am323 flights91.8%
- 8am–11am116 flights82.3%
- 11am–2pm128 flights79.5%
- 2pm–5pm127 flights74.6%
- 5pm–8pm147 flights65.3%
- 8pm–5am285 flights66.8%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.8% of the time, against 65.3% for the evening window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 323 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DFW to DEN through the year
June is the worst month at 66.4% on time, 20 points below September, the best at 86.2%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 114 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.3%. 11 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 57% of the 21,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
57% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 20,755 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 91.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.42% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.9% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 641 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 runs 75.2% on time across 1,125 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,126 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Frontier on DFW to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 86.2% on time and June 66.4%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,108 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to DEN, every carrier
- Frontier on DEN to DFW, the return leg
- United Airlines on DFW to DEN75.7%
- American Airlines on DFW to DEN61.7%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) 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.