Carrier route record
F9DFW→PHL
Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 265
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DFW to PHL sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 265 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on DFW to PHL runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 94 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 255 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.77%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.2%
Every carrier on DFW to PHL, 3,421 flights
These figures cover 265 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.5% 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 PHL
Frontier flew 265 of the 3,421 flights on DFW to PHL, about 8% of it. Its 68.2% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 70.4% to Frontier at 68.2%.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 3,156 | 70.4% | 74 min | 3.64% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 265 | 68.2% | 106 min | 3.77% | C− |
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 41 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am33 flights96.8%
- 8am–11am17 flights—
- 11am–2pm94 flights69.7%
- 2pm–5pm19 flights—
- 5pm–8pm57 flights56.1%
- 8pm–5am45 flights62.8%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.1% on time, against 96.8% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 94 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DFW to PHL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202556 flights60.4%
- Oct–Dec 202576 flights66.2%
- Jan–Mar 202655 flights71.2%
- Apr–Jun 202678 flights73.7%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. 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 68.2% on time across 265 flights.
Frontier on DFW to PHL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 73.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 60.4%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 66 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 79.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 54.0%. 25 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 68% of the 8,566 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.
- 68%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
68% 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 8,566 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 8,566 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 96.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.77%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.5% 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 1,303 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 69.3% on time across 265 flights, within about a point 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. 265 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 PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.77% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 255 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to PHL, every carrier
- Frontier on PHL to DFW, the return leg
- American Airlines on DFW to PHL70.4%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.