Carrier route record

F9CVG→TPA

Frontier Airlines · Cincinnati to Tampa

Flights: 367
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 51%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on CVG to TPA lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 367 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on CVG to TPA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

81.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 366 completed flights

Avg delay

90 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.27%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.4%

Every carrier on CVG to TPA, 726 flights

These figures cover 367 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on CVG to TPA

Frontier flew 367 of the 726 flights on CVG to TPA, most of the route. Its 81.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 81.4% to Delta at 81.3%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on CVG to TPA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines (this page)	367	81.4%	90 min	0.27%	B+
Delta Air Linesthin sample	359	81.3%	73 min	1.11%	B

Flight by flight

Frontier flight numbers on CVG to TPA

F9 166806:0087.3% · 259 flights

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 29 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–8am147 flights89.8%
8am–11am52 flights82.7%
11am–2pm58 flights84.5%
2pm–5pm21 flights—
5pm–8pm62 flights60.7%
8pm–5am27 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.7% on time, against 89.8% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 147 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on CVG to TPA through the year

Jul–Sep 202578 flights87.2%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights78.5%
Jan–Mar 202699 flights76.5%
Apr–Jun 2026111 flights83.8%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 81.4% on time across 367 flights.

Frontier on CVG to TPA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 87.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 76.5%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 92 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 85.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 77.8%. 8 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 59% of the 6,136 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
59%
Carrier
21%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
6%

59% 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 6,136 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 6,136 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.8% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.7% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 773 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 75.7% on time across 369 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. 367 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 TPA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 367 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 81.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 366 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures