Carrier route record
F9AUS→PHX
Frontier Airlines · Austin to Phoenix
- Flights
- 162
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on AUS to PHX lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 162 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,199 at 81.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on AUS to PHX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 159 completed flights
Avg delay
108 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.85%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.8%
Every carrier on AUS to PHX, 3,383 flights
These figures cover 162 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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.
Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on AUS to PHX
Frontier flew 162 of the 3,383 flights on AUS to PHX, about 5% of it. Its 77.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 88.9% to Southwest at 77.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 27 | 88.9% | 72 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 1,199 | 81.4% | 139 min | 1.00% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 162 | 77.4% | 108 min | 1.85% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,995 | 77.2% | 53 min | 0.55% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 81.4%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
When Frontier runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 162 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am42 flights78.0%
- 11am–2pm30 flights—
- 2pm–5pm39 flights76.9%
- 5pm–8pm9 flights—
- 8pm–5am42 flights73.2%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 78.0% on time for the 8am–11am window against 73.2% for 8pm–5am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 42 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on AUS to PHX through the year
- Jul–Sep 202552 flights74.5%
- Oct–Dec 202544 flights81.8%
- Jan–Mar 202648 flights76.1%
- Apr–Jun 202618 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 77.4% on time across 162 flights.
Quarter by quarter Frontier on AUS to PHX held fairly steady: 74.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 81.8% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 76.1% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.9%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 3,870 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
55% 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 3,870 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 3,870 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 78.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.85% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.2% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 872 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.5% on time across 162 flights, 7 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 162 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 Frontier on AUS to PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 162 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 77.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 159 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- AUS to PHX, every carrier
- Frontier on PHX to AUS, the return leg
- American Airlines on AUS to PHX81.4%
- Southwest Airlines on AUS to PHX77.2%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.