Carrier route record
F9PHL→FLL
Frontier Airlines · Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 659
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 659 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,628 at 75.4% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.4% on time across 1,628 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 644 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.28%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on PHL to FLL, 3,588 flights
These figures cover 659 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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 PHL to FLL
Frontier flew 659 of the 3,588 flights on PHL to FLL, about 18% of it. Its 72.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 75.4% to Spirit at 69.9%.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,628 | 75.4% | 78 min | 2.70% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 659 | 72.4% | 82 min | 2.28% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 730 | 70.9% | 80 min | 3.29% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines | 571 | 69.9% | 69 min | 5.95% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 6.0% 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.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on PHL to FLL
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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 30 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am224 flights84.5%
- 8am–11am146 flights74.5%
- 11am–2pm60 flights72.9%
- 2pm–5pm115 flights61.5%
- 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 84.5% 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 224 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on PHL to FLL through the year
January is the weak month at 53.8% on time, against 89.8% in June. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 75 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.6%, a spread of 24 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on PHL to FLL runs when it is late
Frontier on PHL to FLL often beats the schedule: 236 of 644 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 178 late arrivals split 55 under half an hour, 54 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 69 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early236 flights36.6%
- Within 15 min230 flights35.7%
- 15–29 min late55 flights8.5%
- 30–59 min late54 flights8.4%
- 1–2 hours late41 flights6.4%
- 2+ hours late28 flights4.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 644 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
29 of 155 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. In the other direction, 52 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 FLL.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on PHL to FLL
The latest arrival of the period was on 5 December 2025, 17 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Four of the five worst days fell in December 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 5 December 2025 | 17 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 December 2025 | 13 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 December 2025 | 9 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 January 2026 | 6 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 December 2025 | 4 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 to one. The split is drawn from 14,565 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 84.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.28% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
10.7% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 62.3% on time across 657 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 659 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. 659 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 72.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 644 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to FLL, every carrier
- Frontier on FLL to PHL, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHL to FLL75.4%
- JetBlue Airways on PHL to FLL70.9%
- Spirit Airlines on PHL to FLL69.9%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.