Carrier route record
F9DTW→RDU
Frontier Airlines · Detroit to Raleigh
- Flights
- 114
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DTW to RDU lands a B−, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 114 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Frontier on DTW to RDU from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 110 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.51%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
84.3%
Every carrier on DTW to RDU, 1,480 flights
These figures cover 114 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on DTW to RDU
Frontier flew 114 of the 1,480 flights on DTW to RDU, about 8% of it. Its 80.0% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 84.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 84.8% to Frontier at 80.0%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 33 | 84.8% | 52 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,333 | 84.6% | 60 min | 1.58% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 114 | 80.0% | 61 min | 3.51% | B− |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Frontier runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 114 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Frontier's DTW to RDU record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 80.0% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Frontier on DTW to RDU through the year
- Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202544 flights86.0%
- Jan–Mar 202619 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202620 flights—
- Jul–Sep 202614 flights—
Scale runs 80% 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 80.0% on time across 114 flights.
Split by quarter, Frontier on DTW to RDU logged 17 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 44 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 19 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 20 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 14 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 80.0% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on DTW to RDU runs when it is late
Frontier on DTW to RDU often beats the schedule: 43 of 110 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 22 late arrivals split 4 under half an hour, 11 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 7 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early43 flights39.1%
- Within 15 min45 flights40.9%
- 15–29 min late4 flights3.6%
- 30–59 min late11 flights10.0%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights4.5%
- 2+ hours late2 flights1.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 110 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
4 of 25 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. Only 1 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on DTW to RDU
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 December 2025, 2 hours 59 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 December 2025 | 2 hours 59 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 October 2025 | 2 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 September 2025 | 1 hour 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 January 2026 | 1 hour 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 March 2026 | 1 hour 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 1,331 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,331 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 1,331 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 528 of the 1,331 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.51%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
6.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 501 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.6% on time across 114 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 114 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 RDU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.51% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 110 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to RDU, every carrier
- Frontier on RDU to DTW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to RDU84.6%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.