Flight profile · Frontier Airlines
F9686
Denver (DEN) to Washington (DCA) · scheduled 6:40 AM – 12:09 PM
How F9686 performs
874 operations, January 2024 – July 2026.
F9686 arrived on time 91.5% of the time, against 78.9% for all DEN → DCA flights, so this departure is 12.6 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against Frontier Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 14.2 points better.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 874 operations, January 2024 – July 2026 · If F9686 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
What stands out
How F9686 compares to other flight numbers, not just to itself.
This flight runs unusually far ahead of the carrier's own average on this route, better than 98% of 11,589 comparable flight numbers.
91.5% on time for this specific departure, against 77.3% for the same carrier's other flights on this route.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026 · The one thing about this specific departure that ranks most extreme against every other published flight number, out of everything FlyerIntel checks — shown only when something clears a real statistical bar, not for every flight.
Where F9686 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9686 | 91.5% | 0.92% | -15 min | 1.6% | 874 |
| Frontier Airlines on DEN → DCA | 77.3% | 1.14% | -8 min | 8.4% | 3,243 |
| All DEN → DCA flights | 78.9% | 0.94% | -7 min | 7.6% | 4,369 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026
Why F9686 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for F9686 on DEN → DCA. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering January 2024 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies F9686 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
F9686 is usually the aircraft’s first flight of the day: the schedule gives it a median of 7.1 hours on the ground at DEN, so its “inbound” is mostly the aircraft’s arrival the evening before.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, F9686 pushed back an average of 1 minute early; when it came in on time or early, an average of 2 minutes early.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into DEN just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 671 of 866 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late | Left 15+ late after a late inbound | Left 15+ late after an on-time inbound |
|---|---|---|---|
| F9686 | 30% | 8% | 8% |
| Network, same turn | 29% | 12% | 9% |
A night on the ground absorbs most of a late arrival, so a late inbound matters far less on a turn this long than on a same-day one.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 6 hours or more, usually overnight. How often F9686’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often F9686 left 15 or more minutes late is lower than the network’s.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering January 2024 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves DEN late, does that still matter by the time it reaches DCA?
F9686 pushes back an average of 1.1 minutes early and reaches the gate at DCA an average of 10.6 minutes early. The 9.5 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. Its 17.3 minutes on the taxiways at DEN is about what any departure from the airport in that hour spends.
On arrival at DCA, F9686 spends 5.9 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is 1.7 minutes shorter than a typical DCA arrival (7.6 min).
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached DCA. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 33,948 departures from DEN scheduled in the clock hour F9686 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at DCA (435,126 flights), not just F9686’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026
The hour it leaves DEN
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. F9686 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 33,948 departures from DEN are scheduled in the 6 AM–7 AM hour over the period, against 963,099 across the whole day.
F9686 is scheduled out of DEN at 6:40 AM, in the 6 AM–7 AM bank. Departures from DEN in that hour arrive on time 90.8% of the time against 76.0% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 14.7 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from DEN to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
By day of week
Does F9686 run worse on particular days?
Sunday is historically the most reliable day and Thursday the least, a gap of 8.6 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
Other routes F9686 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
| Route | Operated | Flights | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| DEN→PIT Denver to Pittsburgh | July 2, 2023 – November 12, 2023 | 54 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route F9686 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
11 min late
against a median of 15 min early
Percentiles over 874 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering January 2024 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey, different odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9686 this flight | Frontier Airlines | 91.5% | 15 min early | 874 |
| UA1767 | United Airlines | 79.3% | 4 min early | 644 |
| F9688 | Frontier Airlines | 74.7% | 5 min early | 860 |
| F9690 | Frontier Airlines | 62.3% | 1 min late | 880 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. F9686 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 874 records of F9686 operating DEN → DCA, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
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