Flight number record

F9 1263

Frontier Airlines · Detroit to Atlanta

Route: DTW → ATL
Departs: 15:42
Flights: 257
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s F9 1263, check with Frontier Airlines.

F9 1263 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 257 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

On time

74.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 255 completed flights

Avg delay

75 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.78%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

8.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 257 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When F9 1263 flies

F9 1263 flies DTW to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:42, used on 31 of 257 flights. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:4231 flights12.1%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 15:42 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and F9 1263 runs 3 points better at 74.9%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

F9 1263 next to DTW to ATL

Every carrier on DTW to ATL combined arrived on time 79.0% of the time across 4,881 flights, so F9 1263 is 4 points behind it. Frontier flew 501 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 65.3% on time. Across its whole network Frontier Airlines managed 73.2%, which this flight beats by 2 points.

F9 1263 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
F9 1263thin sample	257	74.9%	75 min	0.78%	C+
All Frontier Airlines on DTW–ATL	501	65.3%	107 min	1.60%	C
All carriers on DTW–ATL	4,881	79.0%	75 min	0.80%	B+
Frontier Airlines, whole network	205,332	73.2%	84 min	1.85%	C

Across the year

F9 1263 quarter by quarter

F9 1263 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 79.8% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 68.4%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 64 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.

Jul–Sep 202554 flights79.2%
Oct–Dec 202580 flights68.4%
Jan–Mar 202634 flights70.6%
Apr–Jun 202689 flights79.8%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, F9 1263 did best on Saturday at 91.2% on time and worst on Monday at 59.0%. Each day rests on about 37 flights, so a gap of 32 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why F9 1263 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 64% of the 4,801 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
64%
Carrier
19%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
0%

64% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 4,801 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 64 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 4,801 delay minutes reported on F9 1263.

Cancellations are rare at 0.78%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

8.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 594 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

Every one of the 257 flights under F9 1263 in the data flew DTW to ATL. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 257 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 F9 1263

For a booking, read F9 1263 as 74.9% on time with 0.78% cancelled over 257 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

A flight number here means Frontier Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures