Flight number record
F9 2538
Frontier Airlines · Tampa to Philadelphia
- Route
- TPA → PHL
- Departs
- 12:31
- Flights
- 256
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s F9 2538, check with Frontier Airlines.
F9 2538 draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 256 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so F9 2538 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 102 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 252 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.56%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
16.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 256 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When F9 2538 flies
F9 2538 flies TPA to PHL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:31, used on 39 of 256 flights.
- Departs 12:3139 flights15.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 12:31 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and F9 2538 runs 11 points worse at 67.1%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
F9 2538 next to TPA to PHL
Every carrier on TPA to PHL combined arrived on time 74.3% of the time across 2,659 flights, so F9 2538 is 7 points behind it. Frontier flew 799 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 72.9% on time. Across its whole network Frontier Airlines managed 72.7%, which this flight trails by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9 2538thin sample | 256 | 67.1% | 101 min | 1.56% | C |
| All Frontier Airlines on TPA–PHL | 799 | 72.9% | 89 min | 2.25% | C |
| All carriers on TPA–PHL | 2,659 | 74.3% | 90 min | 2.41% | C |
| Frontier Airlines, whole network | 213,022 | 72.7% | 84 min | 2.05% | C |
Across the year
F9 2538 quarter by quarter
F9 2538 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 72.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 59.0%, a swing of 13 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 20259 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202550 flights68.0%
- Jan–Mar 202654 flights67.9%
- Apr–Jun 202681 flights72.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights59.0%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, F9 2538 did best on Wednesday at 83.3% on time and worst on Saturday at 55.9%. Each day rests on about 37 flights, so a gap of 27 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late F9 2538 runs when it is late
When F9 2538 is late it tends to be very late: 42 of its 83 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 16 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early62 flights24.6%
- Within 15 min107 flights42.5%
- 15–29 min late26 flights10.3%
- 30–59 min late15 flights6.0%
- 1–2 hours late26 flights10.3%
- 2+ hours late16 flights6.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 252 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 75 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 13 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at PHL.
The worst days
Worst days for F9 2538
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 October 2025, 19 hours 21 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 October 2025 | 19 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 March 2026 | 17 hours 47 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 23 August 2026 | 7 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 March 2026 | 4 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 December 2025 | 4 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why F9 2538 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 8,386 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 10%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,386 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 45 to one. The split is drawn from 8,386 delay minutes reported on F9 2538.
Cancellations sit at 1.56% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
16.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 920 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.
Every one of the 256 flights under F9 2538 in the data flew TPA to PHL. 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. 256 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 2538
For a booking, F9 2538 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 16.7% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to PHL, every carrier and departure
- PHL to TPA, the return direction
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on-time record
- Every Frontier Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.