Carrier route record

F9DFW→FLL

Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 143
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 4

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

Frontier on DFW to FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 143 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 723 at 73.5% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on DFW to FLL runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 78 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 139 completed flights

Avg delay

51 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.80%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.2%

Every carrier on DFW to FLL, 2,985 flights

These figures cover 143 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 DFW to FLL

Frontier flew 143 of the 2,985 flights on DFW to FLL, about 5% of it. Its 69.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 77.3% to American at 68.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
JetBlue Airwaysthin sample	133	77.3%	143 min	0.75%	B+
Spirit Airlines	723	73.5%	70 min	4.43%	C−
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	143	69.8%	51 min	2.80%	C
American Airlines	1,986	68.6%	71 min	3.32%	C−

Spirit Airlines cancels 4.4% 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.

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 17 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am32 flights80.6%
8am–11am21 flights—
11am–2pm27 flights—
2pm–5pm36 flights63.9%
5pm–8pm27 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 80.6% of the time, against 63.9% for the afternoon window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 36 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%

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 69.8% on time across 143 flights.

Split by quarter, Frontier on DFW to FLL logged 15 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 51 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 77 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 69.8% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 84.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.0%. 24 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 49% of the 2,160 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
49%
National Airspace System
32%
Carrier
17%
Extreme weather
2%

49% 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 2,160 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 2,160 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 80.6% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.80%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.9% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

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. 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 61.2% on time across 142 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 143 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: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.80% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you roughly 50 minutes; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 139 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