Carrier route record
F9DFW→SLC
Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Salt Lake City
- Flights
- 189
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- 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 SLC lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 189 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,459 at 81.5% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's DFW to SLC record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 52 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 186 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.59%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.6%
Every carrier on DFW to SLC, 3,871 flights
These figures cover 189 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 SLC
Frontier flew 189 of the 3,871 flights on DFW to SLC, about 5% of it. Its 82.8% on time is 13 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 82.8% to Envoy 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. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.5% of the time; American Airlines manages 60.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,214 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 189 | 82.8% | 64 min | 1.59% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,459 | 81.5% | 92 min | 1.51% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,214 | 60.6% | 68 min | 3.25% | D− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 9 | 55.6% | 37 min | 0.00% | D+ |
American Airlines cancels 3.3% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 19 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am27 flights—
- 8am–11am26 flights—
- 11am–2pm21 flights—
- 2pm–5pm46 flights89.1%
- 5pm–8pm69 flights70.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 89.1% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 70.6%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 69 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DFW to SLC through the year
- Jul–Sep 202529 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202541 flights87.2%
- Jan–Mar 202654 flights88.9%
- Apr–Jun 202665 flights85.9%
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 82.8% on time across 189 flights.
Quarter by quarter Frontier on DFW to SLC held fairly steady: 87.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 88.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 85.9% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 3 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 2,038 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
61% 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 2,038 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 2,038 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.59% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.0% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 989 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 77.2% on time across 189 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 189 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 SLC
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 189 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 82.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 186 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to SLC, every carrier
- Frontier on SLC to DFW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DFW to SLC81.5%
- American Airlines on DFW to SLC60.6%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.