Carrier route record
F9DTW→DEN
Frontier Airlines · Detroit to Denver
- Flights
- 486
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DTW to DEN lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 486 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 726 at 82.8% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.8% on time across 726 flights.
Key figures
On time
82.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 481 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.03%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.5%
Every carrier on DTW to DEN, 3,110 flights
These figures cover 486 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on DTW to DEN
Frontier flew 486 of the 3,110 flights on DTW to DEN, about 16% of it. Its 82.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Southwest at 73.9%. One 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 82.8% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 73.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 649 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 726 | 82.8% | 63 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 486 | 82.5% | 80 min | 1.03% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,248 | 79.2% | 57 min | 0.16% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 649 | 73.9% | 60 min | 0.62% | C+ |
United leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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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 22 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am108 flights85.6%
- 8am–11am98 flights85.7%
- 11am–2pm196 flights85.2%
- 2pm–5pm7 flights—
- 5pm–8pm35 flights71.4%
- 8pm–5am42 flights63.4%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.4% on time, against 85.7% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 196 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DTW to DEN through the year
December is the weak month at 46.9% on time, against 91.7% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.2%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on DTW to DEN runs when it is late
Frontier on DTW to DEN often beats the schedule: 184 of 481 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 84 late arrivals split 20 under half an hour, 30 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 34 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early184 flights38.3%
- Within 15 min213 flights44.3%
- 15–29 min late20 flights4.2%
- 30–59 min late30 flights6.2%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights3.7%
- 2+ hours late16 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 481 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 87 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 28 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 25 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DEN.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on DTW to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 June 2026, 7 hours 52 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 June 2026 | 7 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 March 2026 | 5 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 August 2026 | 5 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 September 2025 | 5 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 August 2026 | 5 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 44% of the 6,718 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,718 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 to one. The split is drawn from 6,718 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,977 of the 6,718 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.03% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,123 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 79.6% on time across 486 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. 486 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 DTW to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 486 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 82.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 481 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to DEN, every carrier
- Frontier on DEN to DTW, the return leg
- United Airlines on DTW to DEN82.8%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to DEN79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on DTW to DEN73.9%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.