Flight profile · Frontier Airlines
F9690
Denver (DEN) to Washington (DCA) · scheduled 4:38 PM – 9:59 PM
How F9690 performs
880 operations, January 2024 – July 2026.
F9690 arrived on time 62.3% of the time, against 78.9% for all DEN → DCA flights, so this departure is 16.6 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Frontier Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 15.0 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 880 operations, January 2024 – July 2026 · If F9690 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 F9690 compares to other flight numbers, not just to itself.
Which day you fly matters unusually much here, a wider weekday spread than 100% of 1,710 comparable flight numbers.
75.6% on time on a typical Saturday, against 49.2% on a Monday.
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 F9690 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9690 | 62.3% | 1.02% | 1 min | 16.5% | 880 |
| 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 F9690 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
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 F9690 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 F9690 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, F9690 pushed back an average of 61 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 12 minutes late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into DEN just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 796 of 871 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| F9690 | 24% | 78% | 29% |
| Network, same turn | 18% | 85% | 10% |
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 F9690’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often F9690 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?
F9690 pushes back an average of 25.4 minutes late and reaches the gate at DCA an average of 19.0 minutes late. The 6.4 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 18.7 minutes on the taxiways at DEN is about what any departure from the airport in that hour spends.
On arrival at DCA, F9690 spends 7.0 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 about what any arrival at DCA spends on the ground before reaching the gate.
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 46,366 departures from DEN scheduled in the clock hour F9690 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 F9690’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. F9690 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 46,366 departures from DEN are scheduled in the 4 PM–5 PM hour over the period, against 963,099 across the whole day.
F9690 is scheduled out of DEN at 4:38 PM, in the 4 PM–5 PM bank. Departures from DEN in that hour arrive on time 70.2% of the time against 76.0% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 5.8 points worse 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 F9690 run worse on particular days?
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Monday the least, a gap of 26.4 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 F9690 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CLE→DCA Cleveland to Washington | May 27, 2024 | 1 | — |
| SLC→DEN Salt Lake City to Denver | March 7, 2024 – April 9, 2024 | 34 | — |
| DEN→CID Denver to Cedar Rapids | July 2, 2023 – November 25, 2023 | 112 | 76.6% |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route F9690 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.
83 min late
against a median of 1 min late
F9690 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 1 min late, but the worst tenth are 82 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 880 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 | 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 this flight | 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. F9690 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 880 records of F9690 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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