Carrier route record
F9CLT→PHL
Frontier Airlines · Charlotte to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 545
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on CLT to PHL draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 545 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on CLT to PHL runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 123 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 525 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.49%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.6%
Every carrier on CLT to PHL, 3,510 flights
These figures cover 545 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.1% 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 CLT to PHL
Frontier flew 545 of the 3,510 flights on CLT to PHL, about 16% of it. Its 65.3% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to Frontier at 65.3%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 9 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 98 | 82.3% | 75 min | 2.04% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,858 | 79.6% | 75 min | 2.41% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 545 | 65.3% | 90 min | 3.49% | C− |
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on CLT to PHL
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 32 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–8am23 flights—
- 8am–11am64 flights80.6%
- 11am–2pm119 flights78.8%
- 2pm–5pm150 flights48.6%
- 5pm–8pm4 flights—
- 8pm–5am185 flights61.0%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 80.6% of the time, against 48.6% for the afternoon window. That is 32 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 185 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on CLT to PHL through the year
July is the worst month at 20.6% on time, 65 points below June, the best at 85.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. November was the busiest month here, with 53 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 60.0%. 17 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 61% of the 16,000 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
61% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 16,297 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 80.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.49%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 17.1% 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.
At 449 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.6% on time across 544 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. 545 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 CLT to PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.49% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 525 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to PHL, every carrier
- Frontier on PHL to CLT, the return leg
- American Airlines on CLT to PHL79.6%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.