Carrier route record
F9FLL→DTW
Frontier Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Detroit
- Flights
- 147
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on FLL to DTW earns a D−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 55.6% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 22 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 147 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,810 at 78.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Frontier on FLL to DTW runs 22 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 217 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
55.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 142 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.40%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.3%
Every carrier on FLL to DTW, 2,705 flights
These figures cover 147 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on FLL to DTW
Frontier flew 147 of the 2,705 flights on FLL to DTW, about 5% of it. Its 55.6% on time is 17 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.6% to Frontier 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 78.6% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 58.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 640 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,810 | 78.6% | 70 min | 1.55% | B |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 108 | 69.2% | 71 min | 3.70% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines | 640 | 58.3% | 74 min | 3.28% | D− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 147 | 55.6% | 81 min | 3.40% | D− |
Spirit 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.
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against 20 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am61 flights75.0%
- 11am–2pm7 flights—
- 2pm–5pm14 flights—
- 5pm–8pm21 flights—
- 8pm–5am44 flights48.8%
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 48.8% on time, against 75.0% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 61 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on FLL to DTW through the year
- Oct–Dec 202515 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202651 flights52.1%
- Apr–Jun 202623 flights—
- Jul–Sep 202658 flights69.0%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. 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 55.6% on time across 147 flights.
Split by quarter, Frontier on FLL to DTW logged 15 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 51 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 23 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 58 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 55.6% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 61.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 36.7%, a spread of 25 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on FLL to DTW runs when it is late
The 63 late arrivals split 16 under half an hour, 23 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 24 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early20 flights14.1%
- Within 15 min59 flights41.5%
- 15–29 min late16 flights11.3%
- 30–59 min late23 flights16.2%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights6.3%
- 2+ hours late15 flights10.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 142 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 64 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. 7 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on FLL to DTW
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 January 2026, 7 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 January 2026 | 7 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 March 2026 | 6 hours 49 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 12 April 2026 | 6 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 August 2026 | 4 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 March 2026 | 3 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 71% of the 5,126 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 71%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
71% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,126 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 to one. The split is drawn from 5,126 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 75.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.40%, 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
16.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,127 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 59.7% on time across 147 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. 147 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 FLL to DTW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.40% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 142 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to DTW, every carrier
- Frontier on DTW to FLL, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on FLL to DTW78.6%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to DTW69.2%
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to DTW58.3%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) 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.