Carrier route record
F9IAH→CLT
Frontier Airlines · Houston to Charlotte
- Flights
- 217
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on IAH to CLT draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 217 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,622 at 82.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on IAH to CLT runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 101 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 209 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.5%
Every carrier on IAH to CLT, 2,348 flights
These figures cover 217 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 IAH to CLT
Frontier flew 217 of the 2,348 flights on IAH to CLT, about 9% of it. Its 67.5% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 82.4% to Frontier at 67.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 82.4% of the time; United Airlines manages 74.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 394 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,622 | 82.4% | 135 min | 1.97% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 115 | 76.1% | 53 min | 1.74% | B |
| United Airlines | 394 | 74.7% | 60 min | 1.52% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 217 | 67.5% | 58 min | 3.69% | C− |
American leads United by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 34 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am4 flights—
- 8am–11am41 flights85.4%
- 11am–2pm21 flights—
- 2pm–5pm71 flights74.6%
- 5pm–8pm80 flights51.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.4% on time, against 85.4% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 80 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on IAH to CLT through the year
- Jul–Sep 202536 flights75.0%
- Oct–Dec 202549 flights64.6%
- Jan–Mar 202660 flights69.6%
- Apr–Jun 202672 flights63.8%
Scale runs 55% 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 67.5% on time across 217 flights.
Frontier on IAH to CLT did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 75.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 63.8%, a swing of 11 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 75.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 59.6%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 3,933 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
53% 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 3,933 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 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 3,933 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 85.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.69%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.4% 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 912 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 75.6% on time across 216 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 217 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 IAH to CLT
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.69% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 209 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to CLT, every carrier
- Frontier on CLT to IAH, the return leg
- American Airlines on IAH to CLT82.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on IAH to CLT76.1%
- United Airlines on IAH to CLT74.7%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) 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.