Carrier route record
F9PHL→CLT
Frontier Airlines · Philadelphia to Charlotte
- Flights
- 544
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on PHL to CLT 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 a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 544 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on PHL to CLT runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 50 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 530 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.6%
Every carrier on PHL to CLT, 3,512 flights
These figures cover 544 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.2% 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 PHL to CLT
Frontier flew 544 of the 3,512 flights on PHL to CLT, about 15% of it. Its 72.6% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to Frontier at 72.6%. Two 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 | 7 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 2,864 | 82.3% | 85 min | 2.55% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 97 | 76.3% | 75 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 544 | 72.6% | 74 min | 2.21% | C |
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on PHL to CLT
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 21 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–8am197 flights81.4%
- 8am–11am62 flights80.3%
- 11am–2pm79 flights70.9%
- 2pm–5pm92 flights63.3%
- 5pm–8pm73 flights60.6%
- 8pm–5am41 flights62.5%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.6% on time, against 81.4% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 197 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on PHL to CLT through the year
December is the weak month at 53.1% on time, against 79.6% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. November was the busiest month here, with 54 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.4%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
42% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 10,748 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,933 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.21% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.37%.
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. 13.2% 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.
At 449 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.3% on time across 545 flights, 7 points below 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. 544 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 PHL to CLT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 544 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 72.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 530 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to CLT, every carrier
- Frontier on CLT to PHL, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHL to CLT82.3%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) 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.