Carrier route record

F9PHL→PBI

Frontier Airlines · Philadelphia to West Palm Beach

Flights: 259
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 18%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on PHL to PBI draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 259 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Frontier on PHL to PBI runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 144 extra late arrivals.

On time

62.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 248 completed flights

Avg delay

69 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.25%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

75.3%

Every carrier on PHL to PBI, 1,451 flights

These figures cover 259 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% 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 PBI

Frontier flew 259 of the 1,451 flights on PHL to PBI, about 18% of it. Its 62.9% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 78.0% to Frontier at 62.9%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHL to PBI
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	1,178	78.0%	75 min	2.29%	B
Republic Airwaysthin sample	14	69.2%	56 min	0.00%	C+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	259	62.9%	69 min	4.25%	D−

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

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 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am38 flights73.0%
8am–11am35 flights51.5%
11am–2pm51 flights61.2%
2pm–5pm66 flights60.9%
5pm–8pm69 flights66.2%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 73.0% of the time, against 51.5% for the morning window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 69 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on PHL to PBI through the year

Jul–Sep 20251 flights—
Oct–Dec 202565 flights60.3%
Jan–Mar 202698 flights63.4%
Apr–Jun 202679 flights71.1%
Jul–Sep 202616 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 75%. 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 62.9% on time across 259 flights.

Frontier on PHL to PBI did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 71.1% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 60.3%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 86 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 69.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 57.1%, a spread of 13 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Frontier on PHL to PBI runs when it is late

Frontier on PHL to PBI often beats the schedule: 64 of 248 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 92 late arrivals split 27 under half an hour, 26 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 39 an hour or more.

15+ min early64 flights25.8%
Within 15 min92 flights37.1%
15–29 min late27 flights10.9%
30–59 min late26 flights10.5%
1–2 hours late27 flights10.9%
2+ hours late12 flights4.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 248 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

13 of 84 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 21 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 PBI.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on PHL to PBI

The latest arrival of the period was on 6 January 2026, 4 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in January 2026.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on PHL to PBI in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
6 January 2026	4 hours 10 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
18 July 2026	4 hours	Late-arriving aircraft
26 January 2026	3 hours 58 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
5 January 2026	3 hours 47 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
16 March 2026	3 hours 28 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 6,349 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
43%
National Airspace System
32%
Carrier
24%
Extreme weather
1%

43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,349 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 43 to one. The split is drawn from 6,349 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 73.0% on time here.

Cancellations run at 4.25%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

15.7% 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 951 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 58.7% on time across 259 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 259 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 PBI

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.25% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 248 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures