Carrier route record
F9CLT→PHL
Frontier Airlines · Charlotte to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 574
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 574 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Frontier on CLT to PHL runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 114 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 540 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.92%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.2%
Every carrier on CLT to PHL, 3,537 flights
These figures cover 574 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on CLT to PHL
Frontier flew 574 of the 3,537 flights on CLT to PHL, about 16% of it. Its 65.9% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.2%. 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 65.9%. 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 | 81 | 82.3% | 86 min | 2.47% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,873 | 79.1% | 77 min | 2.47% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 574 | 65.9% | 97 min | 5.92% | C− |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am24 flights—
- 8am–11am61 flights79.7%
- 11am–2pm155 flights76.0%
- 2pm–5pm107 flights53.4%
- 5pm–8pm4 flights—
- 8pm–5am223 flights58.0%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 79.7% of the time, against 53.4% for the afternoon window. That is 26 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 223 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on CLT to PHL through the year
August is the worst month at 50.0% on time, 35 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. August was the busiest month here, with 57 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.3%, a spread of 25 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on CLT to PHL runs when it is late
Frontier on CLT to PHL often beats the schedule: 194 of 540 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 184 late arrivals split 55 under half an hour, 41 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 88 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early194 flights35.9%
- Within 15 min162 flights30.0%
- 15–29 min late55 flights10.2%
- 30–59 min late41 flights7.6%
- 1–2 hours late47 flights8.7%
- 2+ hours late41 flights7.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 540 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 183 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 21 made it up before arrival. 22 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on CLT to PHL
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 August 2026, 15 hours 44 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across August, September and March, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 August 2026 | 15 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 September 2025 | 14 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 August 2026 | 13 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 March 2026 | 10 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 September 2025 | 9 hours 43 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 68% of the 18,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 68%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
68% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 to one. The split is drawn from 17,822 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 79.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.92%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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
16.3% 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.
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 69.8% on time across 572 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 574 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 5.92% 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. 540 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 PHL79.1%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.