Flight profile · Frontier Airlines
F9687
Washington (DCA) to Denver (DEN) · scheduled 1:00 PM – 2:59 PM
How F9687 performs
866 operations, January 2024 – July 2026.
F9687 arrived on time 85.1% of the time, against 79.2% for all DCA → DEN flights, so this departure is 5.9 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against Frontier Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 5.2 points better.
F9687’s scheduled departure has moved during the period FlyerIntel has on file: it typically left around 1:00 PM earlier on, and around 2:00 PM more recently — a 60-minute shift, not the few minutes of day-to-day rounding every published schedule carries. Confirm the current departure time before booking around an older listing.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 866 operations, January 2024 – July 2026 · If F9687 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where F9687 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
Ask for the position of F9687 right now, if receivers on the ground are hearing it. Nothing is requested until you press the button.
Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9687 | 85.1% | 0.81% | -14 min | 5.0% | 866 |
| Frontier Airlines on DCA → DEN | 79.9% | 1.36% | -10 min | 8.0% | 3,240 |
| All DCA → DEN flights | 79.2% | 1.10% | -9 min | 8.8% | 4,366 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026
Why F9687 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s 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 F9687 on DCA → DEN. 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 F9687 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying F9687 came in 15 or more minutes late on 9% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into DCA just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 847 of 860 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 |
|---|---|
| F9687 | 9% |
| Network, same turn | 18% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 45 to 59 minutes. How often F9687’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is lower than the network’s. There are not enough departures in both groups to compare how it left.
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 DCA late, does that still matter by the time it reaches DEN?
F9687 pushes back an average of 3.2 minutes late and reaches the gate at DEN an average of 4.9 minutes early. The 8.2 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. It spends 16.8 minutes on the taxiways at DCA, 5.0 minutes shorter than a typical DCA departure in the same hour.
On arrival at DEN, F9687 spends 14.9 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 5.1 minutes longer than a typical DEN arrival (9.8 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 DEN. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 27,647 departures from DCA scheduled in the clock hour F9687 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at DEN (963,027 flights), not just F9687’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · January 2024 – July 2026
The hour it leaves DCA
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. F9687 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 27,647 departures from DCA are scheduled in the 1 PM–2 PM hour over the period, against 435,076 across the whole day.
F9687 is scheduled out of DCA at 1:00 PM, in the 1 PM–2 PM bank. Departures from DCA in that hour arrive on time 74.9% of the time against 76.5% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour F9687 leaves in is an ordinary one for DCA and explains nothing about its record either way.
The two airport figures cover every departure from DCA 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 F9687 run worse on particular days?
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Friday the least, a gap of 10.4 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 F9687 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| PIT→DEN Pittsburgh to Denver | July 2, 2023 – November 12, 2023 | 50 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route F9687 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.
29 min late
against a median of 14 min early
Percentiles over 866 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9685 | Frontier Airlines | 86.6% | 10 min early | 933 |
| F9687 this flight | Frontier Airlines | 85.1% | 14 min early | 866 |
| F9689 | Frontier Airlines | 66.2% | 1 min early | 892 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. F9687 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 866 records of F9687 operating DCA → DEN, 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
Analysis last recomputed