Carrier route record
F9DFW→RDU
Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Raleigh
- Flights
- 210
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DFW to RDU earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 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 210 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's DFW to RDU record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 205 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.43%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.7%
Every carrier on DFW to RDU, 2,281 flights
These figures cover 210 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 RDU
Frontier flew 210 of the 2,281 flights on DFW to RDU, about 9% of it. Its 85.4% on time is 16 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 85.4% to Spirit at 61.8%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 210 | 85.4% | 73 min | 1.43% | A |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 7 | 71.4% | 20 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 18 | 69.2% | 140 min | 27.78% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,012 | 68.2% | 68 min | 2.83% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 34 | 61.8% | 71 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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 29 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–8am41 flights97.6%
- 8am–11am50 flights89.6%
- 11am–2pm51 flights86.0%
- 2pm–5pm22 flights—
- 5pm–8pm33 flights68.8%
- 8pm–5am13 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.6% of the time, against 68.8% for the evening window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 51 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DFW to RDU through the year
- Jul–Sep 202541 flights89.5%
- Oct–Dec 202553 flights81.1%
- Jan–Mar 202645 flights90.9%
- Apr–Jun 202671 flights82.9%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. 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 85.4% on time across 210 flights.
Quarter by quarter Frontier on DFW to RDU held fairly steady: 89.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 81.1% in Oct–Dec 2025, 90.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 82.9% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 94.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.2%. 12 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 2,175 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.
- 67%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 15%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
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 2,175 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 2,175 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 97.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.95%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.3% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,061 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 76.7% on time across 207 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. 210 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 RDU
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 210 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 85.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 205 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to RDU, every carrier
- Frontier on RDU to DFW, the return leg
- American Airlines on DFW to RDU68.2%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.