Carrier route record
F9MSY→DEN
Frontier Airlines · New Orleans to Denver
- Flights
- 195
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on MSY to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 195 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,016 at 87.1% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on MSY 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
74.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 191 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.8%
Every carrier on MSY to DEN, 2,270 flights
These figures cover 195 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 MSY to DEN
Frontier flew 195 of the 2,270 flights on MSY to DEN, about 9% of it. Its 74.3% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.1% to Southwest at 73.9%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 87.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 73.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,059 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,016 | 87.1% | 60 min | 0.20% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 195 | 74.3% | 93 min | 2.05% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,059 | 73.9% | 53 min | 0.28% | C+ |
The spread between United and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 13 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am12 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm8 flights—
- 2pm–5pm73 flights72.9%
- 5pm–8pm71 flights70.4%
- 8pm–5am31 flights83.3%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 83.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 13 points.
Across the year
Frontier on MSY to DEN through the year
- Jul–Sep 202514 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202556 flights65.5%
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights81.1%
- Apr–Jun 202651 flights81.2%
Scale runs 55% 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 74.3% on time across 195 flights.
Frontier on MSY to DEN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 81.2% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 65.5%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 65 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, Sunday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 52.3%. 36 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 4,547 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
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 4,547 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 25 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 4,547 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 1,821 of the 4,547 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.05% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 9.9% 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 1,062 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 82.2% on time across 195 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 195 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 MSY to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 195 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 74.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 191 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to DEN, every carrier
- Frontier on DEN to MSY, the return leg
- United Airlines on MSY to DEN87.1%
- Southwest Airlines on MSY to DEN73.9%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) 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.