Carrier route record
F9CVG→DFW
Frontier Airlines · Cincinnati to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 189
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on CVG to DFW sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 189 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on CVG to DFW runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 48 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 184 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.2%
Every carrier on CVG to DFW, 1,731 flights
These figures cover 189 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 CVG to DFW
Frontier flew 189 of the 1,731 flights on CVG to DFW, about 11% of it. Its 72.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 91.4% to SkyWest at 71.4%. Three 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 | 38 | 91.4% | 48 min | 7.89% | A− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 23 | 77.3% | 138 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,451 | 74.0% | 78 min | 3.51% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 189 | 72.8% | 81 min | 2.12% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 71.4% | 48 min | 3.33% | C− |
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 15 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–8am9 flights—
- 8am–11am16 flights—
- 11am–2pm46 flights78.3%
- 2pm–5pm47 flights73.3%
- 5pm–8pm69 flights63.2%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.2% on time, against 78.3% for the 11am–2pm 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 69 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on CVG to DFW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202539 flights81.1%
- Oct–Dec 202549 flights74.5%
- Jan–Mar 202650 flights66.0%
- Apr–Jun 202651 flights72.0%
Scale runs 60% 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 72.8% on time across 189 flights.
Frontier on CVG to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 81.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 66.0%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 47 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.2%. 19 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 56% of the 4,026 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 13%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
56% 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 4,026 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 4,026 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.53%.
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 812 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 runs 73.5% on time across 189 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 189 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 CVG to DFW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 189 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 72.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 184 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to DFW, every carrier
- Frontier on DFW to CVG, the return leg
- American Airlines on CVG to DFW74.0%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.