Carrier route record

F9FSD→DEN

Frontier Airlines · Sioux Falls to Denver

Flights: 139
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on FSD to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 139 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,313 at 82.7% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Frontier on FSD to DEN runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 61 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 139 completed flights

Avg delay

108 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

80.2%

Every carrier on FSD to DEN, 1,818 flights

These figures cover 139 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on FSD to DEN

Frontier flew 139 of the 1,818 flights on FSD to DEN, about 8% of it. Its 71.2% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 82.7% to Frontier at 71.2%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 82.7% of the time; United Airlines manages 74.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 366 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on FSD to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	1,313	82.7%	96 min	1.37%	B
United Airlines	366	74.3%	61 min	1.91%	C
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	139	71.2%	108 min	0.00%	C+

SkyWest leads United by 8 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 11 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm2 flights—
2pm–5pm62 flights79.0%
5pm–8pm16 flights—
8pm–5am59 flights67.8%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 79.0% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 67.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 62 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on FSD to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 202513 flights—
Oct–Dec 202540 flights77.5%
Jan–Mar 202627 flights—
Apr–Jun 202634 flights58.8%
Jul–Sep 202625 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 85%. 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 71.2% on time across 139 flights.

Split by quarter, Frontier on FSD to DEN logged 13 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 40 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 27 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 34 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 25 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 71.2% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.2%, a spread of 15 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Frontier on FSD to DEN runs when it is late

Frontier on FSD to DEN often beats the schedule: 54 of 139 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When Frontier on FSD to DEN is late it tends to be very late: 23 of its 40 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 10 were two hours or more.

15+ min early54 flights38.8%
Within 15 min45 flights32.4%
15–29 min late6 flights4.3%
30–59 min late11 flights7.9%
1–2 hours late13 flights9.4%
2+ hours late10 flights7.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 139 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

6 of 43 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 3 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on FSD to DEN

The latest arrival of the period was on 6 April 2026, 14 hours 15 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.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on FSD to DEN in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
6 April 2026	14 hours 15 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
22 December 2025	5 hours 6 minutes	Carrier
10 August 2026	3 hours 32 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
14 August 2026	3 hours 11 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
14 September 2025	3 hours 6 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 4,327 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
54%
National Airspace System
27%
Carrier
17%
Extreme weather
3%

54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,327 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 4,327 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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

16.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 483 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.8% on time across 139 flights, 4 points above 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 139 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 FSD to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 139 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 71.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 139 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures