Carrier route record
F9IAD→TPA
Frontier Airlines · Washington to Tampa
- Flights
- 178
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on IAD to TPA earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 178 flights, with a median arrival 23 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's IAD to TPA record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 76 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 172 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.81%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
83.8%
Every carrier on IAD to TPA, 1,287 flights
These figures cover 178 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 23 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 IAD to TPA
Frontier flew 178 of the 1,287 flights on IAD to TPA, about 14% of it. Its 84.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 84.9% to United at 83.6%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 178 | 84.9% | 75 min | 2.81% | B |
| United Airlines | 1,109 | 83.6% | 69 min | 0.45% | 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 178 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am25 flights—
- 11am–2pm60 flights84.5%
- 2pm–5pm44 flights87.5%
- 5pm–8pm17 flights—
- 8pm–5am32 flights93.8%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. 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 84.5% on time against 93.8% for 8pm–5am. 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 60 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on IAD to TPA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202550 flights77.6%
- Jan–Mar 202643 flights87.5%
- Apr–Jun 202634 flights93.9%
- Jul–Sep 202634 flights75.8%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. 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 84.9% on time across 178 flights.
Frontier on IAD to TPA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 93.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 75.8%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 45 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 94.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.0%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on IAD to TPA runs when it is late
Frontier on IAD to TPA often beats the schedule: 108 of 172 completed flights, 63%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 26 late arrivals split 6 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early108 flights62.8%
- Within 15 min38 flights22.1%
- 15–29 min late6 flights3.5%
- 30–59 min late10 flights5.8%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights3.5%
- 2+ hours late4 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 172 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 30 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 10 still arrived on time. 6 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on IAD to TPA
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 March 2026, 5 hours 53 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 March 2026 | 5 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 August 2026 | 3 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 November 2025 | 2 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 July 2026 | 2 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 March 2026 | 1 hour 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 70% of the 1,940 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 70%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 9%Carrier
70% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,940 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 70 to one. The split is drawn from 1,940 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.81%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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
5.8% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 811 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 runs 86.7% on time across 178 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 178 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 TPA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.81% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 172 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAD to TPA, every carrier
- Frontier on TPA to IAD, the return leg
- United Airlines on IAD to TPA83.6%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) 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.