Skip to content
DelayAtlas

Carrier route record

F9DFW→CLE

Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Cleveland

Flights
168
Period
September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route
10%
Carriers
3
BGRADE

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

Frontier on DFW to CLE lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. 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 rests on 168 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Frontier on DFW to CLE from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

Key figures

On time

78.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 166 completed flights

Avg delay

96 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.19%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

65.8%

Every carrier on DFW to CLE, 1,612 flights

These figures cover 168 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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 DFW to CLE

Frontier flew 168 of the 1,612 flights on DFW to CLE, about 10% of it. Its 78.3% on time is 13 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 65.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to American at 63.7%. 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 DFW to CLE
AirlineFlightsOn timeAvg delayCancelledGrade
Envoy Airthin sample24100.0%—8.33%A−
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample16878.3%96 min1.19%B
American Airlines1,42063.7%63 min2.25%D

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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

  • 5am–8am27 flights—
  • 8am–11am34 flights88.2%
  • 11am–2pm46 flights73.3%
  • 2pm–5pm10 flights—
  • 5pm–8pm31 flights64.5%
  • 8pm–5am20 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.5% on time, against 88.2% for the 8am–11am 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 46 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on DFW to CLE through the year

  • Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
  • Oct–Dec 202533 flights93.9%
  • Jan–Mar 202621 flights—
  • Apr–Jun 202664 flights71.9%
  • Jul–Sep 202633 flights68.8%

Scale runs 60% to 100%. 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 78.3% on time across 168 flights.

Frontier on DFW to CLE did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 93.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 68.8%, a swing of 25 points on roughly 56 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, Friday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.0%, a spread of 10 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Frontier on DFW to CLE runs when it is late

Frontier on DFW to CLE often beats the schedule: 58 of 166 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 36 late arrivals split 5 under half an hour, 16 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 15 an hour or more.

  • 15+ min early58 flights34.9%
  • Within 15 min72 flights43.4%
  • 15–29 min late5 flights3.0%
  • 30–59 min late16 flights9.6%
  • 1–2 hours late8 flights4.8%
  • 2+ hours late7 flights4.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 166 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

9 of 38 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. 7 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on DFW to CLE

The latest arrival of the period was on 23 March 2026, 10 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on DFW to CLE in the period
DateArrived late byLargest filed cause
23 March 202610 hours 10 minutesCarrier
29 September 20257 hours 27 minutesLate-arriving aircraft
12 July 20263 hours 34 minutesLate-arriving aircraft
28 August 20263 hours 7 minutesLate-arriving aircraft
13 August 20262 hours 50 minutesLate-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 3,451 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

  • Late-arriving aircraft
    59%
  • Carrier
    24%
  • National Airspace System
    16%
  • Extreme weather
    1%

59% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,451 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 to one. The split is drawn from 3,451 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 88.2% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

9.0% 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.

The 1,021 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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.1% on time across 169 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 168 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 DFW to CLE

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 168 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 78.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 166 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Related

Where to go next

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.