Carrier route record
F9FLL→PHL
Frontier Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 657
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- 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 PHL draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 657 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,628 at 77.4% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.4% on time across 1,628 flights.
Key figures
On time
62.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 631 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.65%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.0%
Every carrier on FLL to PHL, 3,589 flights
These figures cover 657 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on FLL to PHL
Frontier flew 657 of the 3,589 flights on FLL to PHL, about 18% of it. Its 62.3% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 77.4% to Frontier at 62.3%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 77.4% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 69.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 732 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,628 | 77.4% | 116 min | 2.83% | B |
| Spirit Airlines | 572 | 71.3% | 71 min | 5.24% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 732 | 69.0% | 73 min | 3.28% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 657 | 62.3% | 107 min | 3.65% | D− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 5.2% 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 28 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am12 flights—
- 8am–11am83 flights78.0%
- 11am–2pm211 flights63.2%
- 2pm–5pm54 flights50.0%
- 5pm–8pm47 flights52.2%
- 8pm–5am250 flights60.0%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 78.0% of the time, against 50.0% for the afternoon window. That is 28 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 250 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on FLL to PHL through the year
July is the worst month at 43.6% on time, 27 points below June, the best at 70.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 75 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 71.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.0%, a spread of 21 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on FLL to PHL runs when it is late
Frontier on FLL to PHL often beats the schedule: 176 of 631 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 238 late arrivals split 57 under half an hour, 80 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 101 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early176 flights27.9%
- Within 15 min217 flights34.4%
- 15–29 min late57 flights9.0%
- 30–59 min late80 flights12.7%
- 1–2 hours late62 flights9.8%
- 2+ hours late39 flights6.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 631 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
40 of 257 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. 21 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on FLL to PHL
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 May 2026, 22 hours 30 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 3 May 2026 | 22 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 December 2025 | 17 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 April 2026 | 15 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 February 2026 | 14 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 June 2026 | 13 hours 39 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 26,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
66% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 66 to one. The split is drawn from 25,521 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 78.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.65%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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
16.0% 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 993 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 72.4% on time across 659 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 657 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 PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.65% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 631 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to PHL, every carrier
- Frontier on PHL to FLL, the return leg
- American Airlines on FLL to PHL77.4%
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to PHL71.3%
- JetBlue Airways on FLL to PHL69.0%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) 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.