Carrier route record
F9IND→DFW
Frontier Airlines · Indianapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 110
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on IND to DFW lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 110 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on IND 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
76.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 110 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.2%
Every carrier on IND to DFW, 2,048 flights
These figures cover 110 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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.
Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on IND to DFW
Frontier flew 110 of the 2,048 flights on IND to DFW, about 5% of it. Its 76.4% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.2%. 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 63.6%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 100.0% | — | 20.00% | A− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 35 | 85.7% | 83 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 1,887 | 79.3% | 112 min | 3.07% | B− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 110 | 76.4% | 75 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 11 | 63.6% | 20 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm32 flights81.2%
- 2pm–5pm34 flights88.2%
- 5pm–8pm30 flights63.3%
- 8pm–5am11 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.3% 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 202530 flights80.0%
- Oct–Dec 202536 flights72.2%
- Jan–Mar 202622 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202622 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 85%. 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 76.4% on time across 110 flights.
Split by quarter, Frontier on IND to DFW logged 30 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 36 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 22 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 22 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 76.4% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 1,944 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
52% 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 1,944 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 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 1,944 reported delay minutes.
33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 649 minutes out of 1,944, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 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. 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 84.5% on time across 110 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. 110 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. 110 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 76.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 110 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IND to DFW, every carrier
- Frontier on DFW to IND, the return leg
- American Airlines on IND to DFW79.3%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.