Carrier route record
F9DFW→IAD
Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Washington
- Flights
- 161
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- 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 IAD earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 161 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 915 at 84.4% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's DFW to IAD record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 103 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 157 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.2%
Every carrier on DFW to IAD, 1,928 flights
These figures cover 161 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 IAD
Frontier flew 161 of the 1,928 flights on DFW to IAD, about 8% of it. Its 87.9% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 87.9% to Republic at 55.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 84.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 69.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 843 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 161 | 87.9% | 81 min | 2.48% | A |
| United Airlines | 915 | 84.4% | 93 min | 0.98% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 843 | 69.7% | 72 min | 3.68% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 9 | 55.6% | 104 min | 0.00% | D+ |
American Airlines cancels 3.7% 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 14 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am84 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am35 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm24 flights—
- 2pm–5pm16 flights—
- 5pm–8pm2 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.8% of the time, against 80.0% for the morning window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 84 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DFW to IAD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202548 flights97.9%
- Oct–Dec 202522 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202633 flights93.5%
- Apr–Jun 202658 flights78.9%
Scale runs 70% 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 87.9% on time across 161 flights.
Frontier on DFW to IAD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 97.9% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 78.9%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 54 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.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 1,547 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
46% 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 1,547 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 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 1,547 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 93.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,172 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 81.3% on time across 161 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 161 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 IAD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 161 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 87.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 157 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to IAD, every carrier
- Frontier on IAD to DFW, the return leg
- United Airlines on DFW to IAD84.4%
- American Airlines on DFW to IAD69.7%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.