Carrier route record
F9DFW→IAD
Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Washington
- Flights
- 175
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- 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 IAD lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 175 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 929 at 83.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Frontier on DFW to IAD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 170 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.86%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.4%
Every carrier on DFW to IAD, 1,962 flights
These figures cover 175 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 IAD
Frontier flew 175 of the 1,962 flights on DFW to IAD, about 9% of it. Its 77.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.6% 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 83.6% of the time; American Airlines manages 70.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 849 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 929 | 83.6% | 80 min | 0.86% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 175 | 77.6% | 87 min | 2.86% | B |
| American Airlines | 849 | 70.7% | 74 min | 2.47% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 9 | 55.6% | 104 min | 0.00% | D+ |
The spread between United and American is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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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 23 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am59 flights91.1%
- 8am–11am35 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm39 flights68.4%
- 2pm–5pm35 flights68.6%
- 5pm–8pm7 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 68.4% on time against 91.1% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 59 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DFW to IAD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202521 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202522 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202633 flights93.5%
- Apr–Jun 202658 flights78.9%
- Jul–Sep 202641 flights52.5%
Scale runs 45% 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 77.6% on time across 175 flights.
Frontier on DFW to IAD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 93.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 52.5%, a swing of 41 points on roughly 58 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.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on DFW to IAD runs when it is late
Frontier on DFW to IAD often beats the schedule: 57 of 170 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 38 late arrivals split 8 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 18 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early57 flights33.5%
- Within 15 min75 flights44.1%
- 15–29 min late8 flights4.7%
- 30–59 min late12 flights7.1%
- 1–2 hours late11 flights6.5%
- 2+ hours late7 flights4.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 170 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
9 of 36 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. In the other direction, 11 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 IAD.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on DFW to IAD
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 June 2026, 6 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 June 2026 | 6 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 April 2026 | 6 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 August 2026 | 5 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 August 2026 | 3 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 August 2026 | 2 hours 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 3,306 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,306 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 to one. The split is drawn from 3,306 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 91.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.86%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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
10.6% 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 1,172 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.8% on time across 175 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. 175 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: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.86% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 170 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 IAD83.6%
- American Airlines on DFW to IAD70.7%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.