Carrier route record
F9CLE→RSW
Frontier Airlines · Cleveland to Fort Myers
- Flights
- 572
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 62%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on CLE to RSW lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 572 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on CLE to RSW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 563 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.22%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.9%
Every carrier on CLE to RSW, 925 flights
These figures cover 572 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 CLE to RSW
Frontier flew 572 of the 925 flights on CLE to RSW, most of the route. Its 78.0% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 93.6% to Frontier at 78.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 348 | 93.6% | 60 min | 0.57% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 80.0% | 31 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 572 | 78.0% | 82 min | 1.22% | B |
Departure window
When Frontier runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am131 flights82.8%
- 8am–11am138 flights80.3%
- 11am–2pm86 flights76.5%
- 2pm–5pm119 flights75.4%
- 5pm–8pm32 flights63.3%
- 8pm–5am66 flights76.9%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.3% on time, against 82.8% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 138 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on CLE to RSW through the year
January is the weak month at 51.2% on time, against 95.1% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 106 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.3%. 12 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 42% of the 10,000 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
42% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 10,104 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,463 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.22% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,025 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 71.8% on time across 572 flights, 6 points below 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 572 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 CLE to RSW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 572 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 78.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 563 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to RSW, every carrier
- Frontier on RSW to CLE, the return leg
- United Airlines on CLE to RSW93.6%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.