Carrier route record

F9SMF→DEN

Frontier Airlines · Sacramento to Denver

Flights: 173
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on SMF to DEN lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 173 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,797 at 88.3% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's SMF to DEN record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 171 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.58%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.5%

Every carrier on SMF to DEN, 3,834 flights

These figures cover 173 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on SMF to DEN

Frontier flew 173 of the 3,834 flights on SMF to DEN, about 5% of it. Its 81.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.3% to Southwest at 76.8%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 88.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 76.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,864 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SMF to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	1,797	88.3%	64 min	0.50%	A+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	173	81.9%	72 min	0.58%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,864	76.8%	49 min	0.32%	B+

United leads Southwest by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Frontier runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 173 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Frontier's SMF to DEN record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 81.9% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Frontier on SMF to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 202538 flights78.4%
Oct–Dec 202545 flights82.2%
Jan–Mar 202644 flights72.7%
Apr–Jun 202646 flights93.3%

Scale runs 65% to 100%. 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 81.9% on time across 173 flights.

Frontier on SMF to DEN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 72.7%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 43 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 90.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.5%. 15 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 2,239 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
57%
Carrier
27%
National Airspace System
16%

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 2,239 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 57 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 2,239 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.58%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 909 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 81.9% on time across 173 flights, within half a point 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. 173 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 SMF to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 173 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 81.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 171 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