Carrier route record
F9DTW→TPA
Frontier Airlines · Detroit to Tampa
- Flights
- 128
- 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 DTW to TPA sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 128 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,716 at 80.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on DTW to TPA runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 67 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 127 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.78%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.0%
Every carrier on DTW to TPA, 2,370 flights
These figures cover 128 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% 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 DTW to TPA
Frontier flew 128 of the 2,370 flights on DTW to TPA, about 5% of it. Its 70.9% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.9% to Southwest at 40.0%. 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 80.9% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 74.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 521 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,716 | 80.9% | 61 min | 1.34% | B |
| Spirit Airlines | 521 | 74.7% | 63 min | 3.84% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 128 | 70.9% | 60 min | 0.78% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 40.0% | 23 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.8% 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 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 128 flights.
- 5am–8am15 flights—
- 8am–11am19 flights—
- 11am–2pm17 flights—
- 2pm–5pm33 flights69.7%
- 5pm–8pm30 flights70.0%
- 8pm–5am14 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 70.0% on time. The full set of windows spans half a point.
Across the year
Frontier on DTW to TPA through the year
- Oct–Dec 202519 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202672 flights76.4%
- Apr–Jun 202637 flights66.7%
Scale runs 60% 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 70.9% on time across 128 flights.
Split by quarter, Frontier on DTW to TPA logged 19 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 72 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 37 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 70.9% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 2,227 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 10%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
59% 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 2,227 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 59 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 2,227 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.78%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.7% 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 983 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 75.0% on time across 129 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 128 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 TPA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 128 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 70.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 127 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to TPA, every carrier
- Frontier on TPA to DTW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to TPA80.9%
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to TPA74.7%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.