Carrier route record
F9DFW→CVG
Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Cincinnati
- 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 DFW to CVG sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 189 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on DFW to CVG runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 41 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 185 completed flights
Avg delay
112 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.3%
Every carrier on DFW to CVG, 1,730 flights
These figures cover 189 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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 DFW to CVG
Frontier flew 189 of the 1,730 flights on DFW to CVG, about 11% of it. Its 73.5% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 89.7% to PSA at 37.5%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 89.7% | 33 min | 3.33% | A− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 189 | 73.5% | 112 min | 2.12% | C |
| American Airlines | 1,452 | 68.0% | 71 min | 3.24% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 23 | 63.6% | 60 min | 4.35% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 36 | 37.5% | 69 min | 11.11% | F− |
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 12 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–8am16 flights—
- 8am–11am23 flights—
- 11am–2pm31 flights73.3%
- 2pm–5pm34 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm29 flights—
- 8pm–5am56 flights61.8%
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.8% on time, against 73.3% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 56 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DFW to CVG through the year
- Jul–Sep 202539 flights73.0%
- Oct–Dec 202549 flights74.5%
- Jan–Mar 202650 flights70.0%
- Apr–Jun 202651 flights76.5%
Scale runs 60% to 80%. 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 73.5% on time across 189 flights.
Quarter by quarter Frontier on DFW to CVG held fairly steady: 73.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 74.5% in Oct–Dec 2025, 70.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 76.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 78.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.6%. 9 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 63% of the 5,469 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.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
63% 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 5,469 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 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 5,469 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 10.8% 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 72.8% 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 DFW to CVG
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 73.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 185 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to CVG, every carrier
- Frontier on CVG to DFW, the return leg
- American Airlines on DFW to CVG68.0%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) 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.