Carrier route record
F9DFW→SAN
Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to San Diego
- Flights
- 254
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DFW to SAN draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 254 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on DFW to SAN runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 139 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 245 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
63.5%
Every carrier on DFW to SAN, 3,608 flights
These figures cover 254 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% 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 SAN
Frontier flew 254 of the 3,608 flights on DFW to SAN, about 7% of it. Its 63.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 63.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 63.8% to Alaska at 56.8%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 3,214 | 63.8% | 67 min | 3.02% | D− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 254 | 63.7% | 85 min | 2.76% | D |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 140 | 56.8% | 71 min | 0.71% | 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 12 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–8am6 flights—
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm29 flights—
- 5pm–8pm73 flights70.0%
- 8pm–5am143 flights57.7%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.7% on time, against 70.0% for the 5pm–8pm 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 143 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DFW to SAN through the year
- Jul–Sep 202571 flights50.0%
- Oct–Dec 202559 flights64.3%
- Jan–Mar 202645 flights76.2%
- Apr–Jun 202679 flights68.4%
Scale runs 40% 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 63.7% on time across 254 flights.
Frontier on DFW to SAN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 76.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 50.0%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 64 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, Friday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 52.4%. 22 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 57% of the 7,572 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
57% 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 7,572 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 7,572 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.76%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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. 13.9% 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 1,171 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 78.9% on time across 254 flights, 15 points above 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 15 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 254 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 SAN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 254 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 63.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 245 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to SAN, every carrier
- Frontier on SAN to DFW, the return leg
- American Airlines on DFW to SAN63.8%
- Alaska Airlines on DFW to SAN56.8%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- San Diego International (SAN) 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.