Carrier route record
F9MSP→DFW
Frontier Airlines · Minneapolis to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 229
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on MSP 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 229 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,411 at 77.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on MSP to DFW runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 53 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 224 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.75%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.4%
Every carrier on MSP to DFW, 3,261 flights
These figures cover 229 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.4% 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 MSP to DFW
Frontier flew 229 of the 3,261 flights on MSP to DFW, about 7% of it. Its 72.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 77.9% to Envoy at 66.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,411 | 77.9% | 59 min | 1.35% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,618 | 75.7% | 99 min | 3.52% | B− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 229 | 72.3% | 107 min | 1.75% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 3 | 66.7% | 118 min | 0.00% | C+ |
American Airlines cancels 3.5% 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 19 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am41 flights77.5%
- 11am–2pm37 flights83.8%
- 2pm–5pm19 flights—
- 5pm–8pm93 flights64.4%
- 8pm–5am39 flights73.7%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.4% on time, against 83.8% for the 11am–2pm 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 93 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on MSP to DFW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202541 flights67.5%
- Oct–Dec 202562 flights82.0%
- Jan–Mar 202654 flights75.0%
- Apr–Jun 202672 flights64.8%
Scale runs 55% 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 72.3% on time across 229 flights.
Frontier on MSP to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 82.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 64.8%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 57 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 78.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.5%. 10 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 67% of the 6,639 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.
- 67%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
67% 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 6,639 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 67 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 6,639 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.75% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.44%.
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. 13.4% 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 852 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 79.5% on time across 229 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. 229 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 MSP to DFW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 229 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 72.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 224 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to DFW, every carrier
- Frontier on DFW to MSP, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to DFW77.9%
- American Airlines on MSP to DFW75.7%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) 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.