Carrier route record

F9PHL→FLL

Frontier Airlines · Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale

Flights: 579
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 17%
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 FLL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four 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 579 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,449 at 75.9% on time.

American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.9% on time across 1,449 flights.

On time

73.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 569 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.73%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.0%

Every carrier on PHL to FLL, 3,411 flights

These figures cover 579 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 FLL

Frontier flew 579 of the 3,411 flights on PHL to FLL, about 17% of it. Its 73.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 73.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 75.9% to Spirit at 69.5%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 75.9% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 69.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 709 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on PHL to FLL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	1,449	75.9%	74 min	2.62%	B
Frontier Airlines (this page)	579	73.1%	81 min	1.73%	C
JetBlue Airways	674	70.1%	75 min	2.08%	C
Spirit Airlines	709	69.5%	69 min	5.22%	C−

Spirit Airlines cancels 5.2% 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 29 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am203 flights83.9%
8am–11am138 flights74.5%
11am–2pm67 flights74.2%
2pm–5pm57 flights63.6%
5pm–8pm99 flights54.6%
8pm–5am15 flights—

Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.6% on time, against 83.9% 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 203 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on PHL to FLL through the year

Jul–Sep 202565 flights84.4%
Oct–Dec 2025125 flights77.4%
Jan–Mar 2026208 flights63.2%
Apr–Jun 2026181 flights77.2%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. 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 73.1% on time across 579 flights.

Frontier on PHL to FLL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 84.4% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 63.2%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 145 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.9%. 21 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 42% of the 12,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
42%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
25%
Extreme weather
1%

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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 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 12,429 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 83.9% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.73% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 10.2% 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.

The 993 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 64.5% on time across 577 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 579 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 FLL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 579 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 73.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 569 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures