Carrier route record
F9IAD→DFW
Frontier Airlines · Washington to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 161
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on IAD to DFW lands a B−, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 3.6 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 161 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 914 at 79.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on IAD to DFW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 155 completed flights
Avg delay
213 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.1%
Every carrier on IAD to DFW, 1,928 flights
These figures cover 161 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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 IAD to DFW
Frontier flew 161 of the 1,928 flights on IAD to DFW, about 8% of it. Its 81.3% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 81.3% to Republic at 66.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 79.8% of the time; American Airlines manages 73.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 844 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 161 | 81.3% | 213 min | 3.11% | B− |
| United Airlines | 914 | 79.8% | 82 min | 0.77% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 844 | 73.3% | 108 min | 3.67% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 9 | 66.7% | 69 min | 0.00% | C+ |
American Airlines cancels 3.7% 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am46 flights90.7%
- 11am–2pm58 flights78.9%
- 2pm–5pm22 flights—
- 5pm–8pm23 flights—
- 8pm–5am12 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 78.9% on time against 90.7% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 58 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on IAD to DFW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202548 flights91.7%
- Oct–Dec 202522 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202633 flights87.1%
- Apr–Jun 202658 flights73.2%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. 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 81.3% on time across 161 flights.
Frontier on IAD to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 91.7% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 73.2%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 54 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 94.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 80.0%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 6,185 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Extreme weather
- 12%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 20% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,185 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,164 of the 6,185 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.11%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,172 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 87.9% on time across 161 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 161 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 IAD to DFW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.11% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 3.6 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. 155 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAD to DFW, every carrier
- Frontier on DFW to IAD, the return leg
- United Airlines on IAD to DFW79.8%
- American Airlines on IAD to DFW73.3%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.