Flight number record
F9 3971
Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Phoenix
- Route
- DFW → PHX
- Departs
- 11:54
- Flights
- 289
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s F9 3971, check with Frontier Airlines.
F9 3971 lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 289 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
80.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 286 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.04%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
6.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 289 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Schedule
When F9 3971 flies
F9 3971 flies DFW to PHX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:54, used on 32 of 289 flights.
- Departs 11:5432 flights11.1%
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 11:54 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and F9 3971 runs 3 points better at 80.8%. 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 3971 next to DFW to PHX
Every carrier on DFW to PHX combined arrived on time 73.0% of the time across 5,258 flights, so F9 3971 is 8 points ahead of it. Frontier flew 635 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.4% on time. Across its whole network Frontier Airlines managed 72.7%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F9 3971thin sample | 289 | 80.8% | 99 min | 1.04% | B |
| All Frontier Airlines on DFW–PHX | 635 | 76.4% | 86 min | 2.05% | B |
| All carriers on DFW–PHX | 5,258 | 73.0% | 69 min | 2.36% | C |
| Frontier Airlines, whole network | 213,022 | 72.7% | 84 min | 2.05% | C |
Across the year
F9 3971 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter F9 3971 held fairly steady: 80.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 85.7% in Jan–Mar 2026, 79.5% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 80.8% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202512 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202566 flights80.3%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights85.7%
- Apr–Jun 202674 flights79.5%
- Jul–Sep 202652 flights80.8%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, F9 3971 did best on Saturday at 88.4% on time and worst on Monday at 73.9%. Each day rests on about 41 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late F9 3971 runs when it is late
F9 3971 often beats the schedule: 121 of 286 completed flights, 42%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 55 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 19 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early121 flights42.3%
- Within 15 min110 flights38.5%
- 15–29 min late18 flights6.3%
- 30–59 min late18 flights6.3%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late14 flights4.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 286 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 55 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. 8 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for F9 3971
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 August 2026, 13 hours 39 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 August 2026 | 13 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 August 2026 | 9 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 April 2026 | 5 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 October 2025 | 4 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 November 2025 | 4 hours 42 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why F9 3971 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 5,439 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
61% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,439 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 5,439 delay minutes reported on F9 3971.
Cancellations sit at 1.04% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
6.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 868 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 289 flights under F9 3971 in the data flew DFW to PHX. 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. 289 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 3971
For a booking, read F9 3971 as 80.8% on time with 1.04% cancelled over 289 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to PHX, every carrier and departure
- PHX to DFW, the return direction
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) 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.