Carrier route record

F9IND→DFW

Frontier Airlines · Indianapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 120
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 6%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on IND to DFW sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 120 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Frontier on IND to DFW runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 59 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 119 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.83%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

81.2%

Every carrier on IND to DFW, 2,046 flights

These figures cover 120 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% 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 IND to DFW

Frontier flew 120 of the 2,046 flights on IND to DFW, about 6% of it. Its 71.4% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to Envoy at 66.7%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on IND to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
PSA Airlinesthin sample	5	100.0%	—	20.00%	A−
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	17	94.1%	44 min	0.00%	A+
American Airlines	1,898	81.7%	103 min	2.53%	B
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	120	71.4%	67 min	0.83%	C+
Envoy Airthin sample	6	66.7%	25 min	0.00%	C+

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 half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am3 flights—
11am–2pm20 flights—
2pm–5pm34 flights88.2%
5pm–8pm30 flights63.3%
8pm–5am33 flights62.5%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.5% on time, against 88.2% for the 2pm–5pm 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 34 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on IND to DFW through the year

Jul–Sep 202513 flights—
Oct–Dec 202536 flights72.2%
Jan–Mar 202622 flights—
Apr–Jun 202622 flights—
Jul–Sep 202627 flights—

Scale runs 65% 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 71.4% on time across 120 flights.

Split by quarter, Frontier on IND to DFW logged 13 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 36 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 22 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 22 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 27 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 71.4% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 75.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.4%, a spread of 6 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Frontier on IND to DFW runs when it is late

Frontier on IND to DFW often beats the schedule: 36 of 119 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 34 late arrivals split 10 under half an hour, 13 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 11 an hour or more.

15+ min early36 flights30.3%
Within 15 min49 flights41.2%
15–29 min late10 flights8.4%
30–59 min late13 flights10.9%
1–2 hours late4 flights3.4%
2+ hours late7 flights5.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 119 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 22 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 1 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 13 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DFW.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on IND to DFW

The latest arrival of the period was on 19 June 2026, 5 hours 13 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.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on IND to DFW in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
19 June 2026	5 hours 13 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
7 August 2026	3 hours	Late-arriving aircraft
14 August 2026	2 hours 38 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
16 March 2026	2 hours 17 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
20 November 2025	2 hours 14 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 2,270 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
61%
National Airspace System
32%
Carrier
6%
Extreme weather
1%

61% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,270 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 57 to one. The split is drawn from 2,270 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

9.2% 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 761 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 80.7% on time across 120 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 120 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 IND to DFW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 120 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 71.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 119 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures