Flight profile · Frontier Airlines
F9689
Washington (DCA) to Denver (DEN) · scheduled 6:00 PM – 8:12 PM
How F9689 performs
892 operations, November 2023 – July 2026.
F9689 arrived on time 66.2% of the time, against 79.2% for all DCA → DEN flights, so this departure is 13.0 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Frontier Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 13.7 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 892 operations, November 2023 – July 2026 · If F9689 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 F9689 compares to other flight numbers, not just to itself.
This flight runs unusually far behind the carrier's own average on this route, worse than 94% of 11,589 comparable flight numbers.
66.2% on time for this specific departure, against 79.9% for the same carrier's other flights on this route.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · November 2023 – 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 F9689 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 F9689 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9689 | 66.2% | 1.57% | -1 min | 15.4% | 892 |
| 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 · November 2023 – July 2026
Why F9689 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for F9689 on DCA → DEN. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering November 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies F9689 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, F9689 pushed back an average of 73 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 5 minutes late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into DCA just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 856 of 878 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| F9689 | 23% | 87% | 13% |
| Network, same turn | 17% | 68% | 9% |
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 60 to 89 minutes. How often F9689’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often F9689 left 15 or more minutes late is higher 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 November 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves DCA late, does that still matter by the time it reaches DEN?
F9689 pushes back an average of 26.2 minutes late and reaches the gate at DEN an average of 22.9 minutes late. The 3.3 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 21.1 minutes on the taxiways at DCA is about what any departure from the airport in that hour spends.
On arrival at DEN, F9689 spends 14.5 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 4.7 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 19,288 departures from DCA scheduled in the clock hour F9689 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 F9689’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · November 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves DCA
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. F9689 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 19,288 departures from DCA are scheduled in the 6 PM–7 PM hour over the period, against 435,076 across the whole day.
F9689 is scheduled out of DCA at 6:00 PM, in the 6 PM–7 PM bank. Departures from DCA in that hour arrive on time 65.7% of the time against 76.5% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 10.8 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.
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 · November 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
By day of week
Does F9689 run worse on particular days?
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Friday the least, a gap of 15.1 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · November 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
Other routes F9689 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→SFO Denver to San Francisco | April 8, 2024 – May 12, 2024 | 11 | — |
| DEN→PDX Denver to Portland | April 13, 2024 | 1 | — |
| DEN→SLC Denver to Salt Lake City | January 18, 2024 – February 13, 2024 | 27 | — |
| PIT→DEN Pittsburgh to Denver | September 12, 2023 – October 3, 2023 | 4 | — |
| MCO→DEN Orlando to Denver | July 8, 2023 | 1 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route F9689 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.
99 min late
against a median of 1 min early
F9689 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 1 min early, but the worst tenth are 100 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 892 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering November 2023 – 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 | Frontier Airlines | 85.1% | 14 min early | 866 |
| F9689 this flight | 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. F9689 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 892 records of F9689 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