Carrier route record

F9DFW→LAX

Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles

Flights: 447
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
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 LAX lands a B+, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 447 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 718 at 87.9% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 87.9% on time across 718 flights.

On time

76.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 442 completed flights

Avg delay

75 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.89%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.1%

Every carrier on DFW to LAX, 6,238 flights

These figures cover 447 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 LAX

Frontier flew 447 of the 6,238 flights on DFW to LAX, about 7% of it. Its 76.0% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.9% to American at 68.3%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 87.9% of the time; American Airlines manages 68.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 4,568 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	718	87.9%	106 min	1.95%	A
Spirit Airlines	505	80.2%	66 min	2.77%	B
Frontier Airlines (this page)	447	76.0%	75 min	0.89%	B+
American Airlines	4,568	68.3%	68 min	2.50%	C

The spread between Delta and American is 20 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 20 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Flight by flight

Frontier flight numbers on DFW to LAX

F9 321116:3975.2% · 289 flights

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 18 points, against 20 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am81 flights87.7%
8am–11am31 flights74.2%
11am–2pm40 flights79.5%
2pm–5pm151 flights74.3%
5pm–8pm16 flights—
8pm–5am128 flights69.3%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.7% of the time, against 69.3% for the overnight window. That is 18 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 151 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on DFW to LAX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, March worst

May is the best month on the calendar at 89.7% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. June was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 84.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.1%. 20 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 67% of the 7,948 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
67%
Carrier
20%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
2%

67% 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 7,948 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 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 7,948 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 87.7% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.89%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

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. 9.5% 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 1,235 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 74.1% on time across 447 flights, within 2 points 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. 447 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 LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 447 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 76.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 442 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