Carrier route record
F9DFW→FLL
Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 205
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DFW to FLL draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 205 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 596 at 72.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Frontier on DFW to FLL runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 98 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 200 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.95%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.7%
Every carrier on DFW to FLL, 3,143 flights
These figures cover 205 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on DFW to FLL
Frontier flew 205 of the 3,143 flights on DFW to FLL, about 7% of it. Its 67.5% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 75.8% to Frontier at 67.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 311 | 75.8% | 113 min | 2.57% | B |
| Spirit Airlines | 596 | 72.4% | 69 min | 5.03% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,031 | 68.3% | 67 min | 2.61% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 205 | 67.5% | 57 min | 1.95% | C |
Spirit Airlines cancels 5.0% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 33 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am46 flights86.4%
- 8am–11am27 flights—
- 11am–2pm27 flights—
- 2pm–5pm73 flights56.2%
- 5pm–8pm32 flights53.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.1% on time, against 86.4% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 73 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DFW to FLL through the year
- Oct–Dec 202515 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202651 flights79.6%
- Apr–Jun 202677 flights65.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights62.3%
Scale runs 55% 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 67.5% on time across 205 flights.
Frontier on DFW to FLL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 79.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 62.3%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 68 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 80.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.5%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on DFW to FLL runs when it is late
The 65 late arrivals split 23 under half an hour, 20 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 22 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early32 flights16.0%
- Within 15 min103 flights51.5%
- 15–29 min late23 flights11.5%
- 30–59 min late20 flights10.0%
- 1–2 hours late16 flights8.0%
- 2+ hours late6 flights3.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 200 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 45 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 4 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 24 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at FLL.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on DFW to FLL
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 June 2026, 5 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 June 2026 | 5 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 June 2026 | 2 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 July 2026 | 2 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 August 2026 | 2 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 July 2026 | 2 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 3,686 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%National Airspace System
- 16%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,686 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 to one. The split is drawn from 3,686 reported delay minutes.
37% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,357 minutes out of 3,686, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.95% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.49%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
11.0% 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 1,119 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 57.1% on time across 205 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 205 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 FLL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 205 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 67.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 200 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to FLL, every carrier
- Frontier on FLL to DFW, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on DFW to FLL75.8%
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to FLL72.4%
- American Airlines on DFW to FLL68.3%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.