Carrier route record
F9DTW→BWI
Frontier Airlines · Detroit to Baltimore
- Flights
- 150
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DTW to BWI lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 150 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,204 at 81.9% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on DTW to BWI from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 147 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.9%
Every carrier on DTW to BWI, 2,261 flights
These figures cover 150 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 DTW to BWI
Frontier flew 150 of the 2,261 flights on DTW to BWI, about 7% of it. Its 76.9% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 100.0% to Frontier at 76.9%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 14 | 100.0% | — | 7.14% | A− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 109 | 82.6% | 103 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,204 | 81.9% | 73 min | 1.50% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 784 | 79.6% | 48 min | 1.02% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 150 | 76.9% | 66 min | 2.00% | B |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 81.9%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 28 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am50 flights72.0%
- 11am–2pm61 flights90.2%
- 2pm–5pm2 flights—
- 5pm–8pm37 flights61.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.8% on time, against 90.2% for the 11am–2pm 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 61 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DTW to BWI through the year
- Jul–Sep 202541 flights78.0%
- Oct–Dec 202536 flights80.6%
- Jan–Mar 202614 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202659 flights83.1%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. 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 76.9% on time across 150 flights.
Quarter by quarter Frontier on DTW to BWI held fairly steady: 78.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 80.6% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 83.1% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.5%. 7 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 54% of the 2,241 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 11%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
54% 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 2,241 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 2,241 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.5% 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.
At 409 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.1% on time across 148 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 150 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 DTW to BWI
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 150 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 76.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 147 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to BWI, every carrier
- Frontier on BWI to DTW, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to BWI82.6%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to BWI81.9%
- Southwest Airlines on DTW to BWI79.6%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) 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.