Carrier route record

F9XNA→DEN

Frontier Airlines · Bentonville to Denver

Flights: 150
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 11%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on XNA to DEN lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That rests on 150 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 825 at 81.7% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's XNA to DEN record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 150 completed flights

Avg delay

106 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

81.5%

Every carrier on XNA to DEN, 1,345 flights

These figures cover 150 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 XNA to DEN

Frontier flew 150 of the 1,345 flights on XNA to DEN, about 11% of it. Its 82.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 82.0% to United at 80.7%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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.

On-time performance by carrier on XNA to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	150	82.0%	106 min	0.00%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	825	81.7%	84 min	0.85%	B+
United Airlines	370	80.7%	68 min	0.54%	B+

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 81.7%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

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 16 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm90 flights86.7%
5pm–8pm26 flights—
8pm–5am34 flights70.6%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 86.7% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 70.6%. 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 90 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on XNA to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
Oct–Dec 202545 flights80.0%
Jan–Mar 202618 flights—
Apr–Jun 202637 flights94.6%
Jul–Sep 202633 flights84.8%

Scale runs 70% 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 82.0% on time across 150 flights.

Frontier on XNA to DEN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 94.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 80.0%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 50 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 90.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.4%, a spread of 14 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

Frontier on XNA to DEN often beats the schedule: 76 of 150 completed flights, 51%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When Frontier on XNA to DEN is late it tends to be very late: 14 of its 27 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 4 were two hours or more.

15+ min early76 flights50.7%
Within 15 min47 flights31.3%
15–29 min late6 flights4.0%
30–59 min late7 flights4.7%
1–2 hours late10 flights6.7%
2+ hours late4 flights2.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 150 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

7 of 32 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. Only 2 left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on XNA to DEN

The latest arrival of the period was on 14 May 2026, 19 hours 39 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on XNA to DEN in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
14 May 2026	19 hours 39 minutes	Carrier
5 October 2025	2 hours 53 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
29 September 2025	2 hours 10 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
25 June 2026	2 hours 2 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
14 March 2026	1 hour 45 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 43% of the 2,873 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
43%
Late-arriving aircraft
37%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
1%

37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,873 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 to one. The split is drawn from 2,873 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,235 of the 2,873 delay minutes reported here.

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

9.3% 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.

The 616 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.

The return leg runs 83.3% on time across 150 flights, within about 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. 150 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 XNA to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 150 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 82.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 150 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