Carrier route record

F9ELP→DEN

Frontier Airlines · El Paso to Denver

Flights: 339
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 18%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on ELP to DEN lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 339 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 698 at 83.5% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on ELP to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 337 completed flights

Avg delay

90 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.59%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.2%

Every carrier on ELP to DEN, 1,848 flights

These figures cover 339 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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 ELP to DEN

Frontier flew 339 of the 1,848 flights on ELP to DEN, about 18% of it. Its 78.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.5% to SkyWest at 53.3%. 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 83.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 76.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 780 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ELP to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	698	83.5%	82 min	0.72%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	339	78.6%	90 min	0.59%	B+
Southwest Airlines	780	76.6%	66 min	0.00%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	31	53.3%	77 min	3.23%	F−

United leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Flight by flight

Frontier flight numbers on ELP to DEN

F9 441813:3378.3% · 329 flights

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 12 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm185 flights76.6%
2pm–5pm51 flights88.2%
5pm–8pm100 flights76.8%
8pm–5am3 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 76.6% on time against 88.2% for 2pm–5pm. 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 185 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on ELP to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 202578 flights74.0%
Oct–Dec 202587 flights77.0%
Jan–Mar 202688 flights85.1%
Apr–Jun 202686 flights77.9%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. 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 78.6% on time across 339 flights.

Frontier on ELP to DEN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 85.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 74.0%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 85 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 87.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 69.2%. 18 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 54% of the 6,450 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
54%
Carrier
24%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
0%

54% 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 6,450 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 6,450 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is 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. 10.7% 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.

The 563 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 81.0% on time across 339 flights, within 2 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. 339 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 ELP to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 339 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 78.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 337 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