Carrier route record
F9TPA→DEN
Frontier Airlines · Tampa to Denver
- Flights
- 604
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on TPA to DEN lands a B+, 2 points 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 604 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,186 at 84.5% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on TPA 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
79.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 598 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.83%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.2%
Every carrier on TPA to DEN, 3,099 flights
These figures cover 604 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 TPA to DEN
Frontier flew 604 of the 3,099 flights on TPA to DEN, about 19% of it. Its 79.3% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.5% to Southwest at 79.0%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,186 | 84.5% | 67 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 604 | 79.3% | 85 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,309 | 79.0% | 49 min | 0.23% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 84.5%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on TPA to DEN
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 21 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am176 flights86.0%
- 8am–11am32 flights90.6%
- 11am–2pm117 flights86.2%
- 2pm–5pm53 flights71.7%
- 5pm–8pm55 flights72.7%
- 8pm–5am171 flights70.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.6% of the time, against 70.0% for the overnight window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 176 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on TPA to DEN through the year
August is the worst month at 65.2% on time, 25 points below November, the best at 90.0%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 74 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 96.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.7%. 26 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 49% of the 11,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
49% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 10,563 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 3,836 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, 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
7.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,506 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 81.6% on time across 603 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. 604 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 TPA to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 604 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 79.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 598 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to DEN, every carrier
- Frontier on DEN to TPA, the return leg
- United Airlines on TPA to DEN84.5%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to DEN79.0%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) 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 7.04 million flight records
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.