Carrier route record
F9PHL→PBI
Frontier Airlines · Philadelphia to West Palm Beach
- Flights
- 270
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on PHL to PBI draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 270 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on PHL to PBI runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 116 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 259 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.07%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.4%
Every carrier on PHL to PBI, 1,553 flights
These figures cover 270 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.7% 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 PBI
Frontier flew 270 of the 1,553 flights on PHL to PBI, about 17% of it. Its 66.0% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 76.2% to Frontier at 66.0%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,269 | 76.2% | 81 min | 2.29% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 14 | 69.2% | 56 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 270 | 66.0% | 67 min | 4.07% | C− |
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 16 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–8am38 flights73.0%
- 8am–11am39 flights56.8%
- 11am–2pm72 flights65.2%
- 2pm–5pm50 flights71.4%
- 5pm–8pm71 flights64.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% 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 56.8% for the morning window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 72 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on PHL to PBI through the year
- Jul–Sep 202528 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202565 flights60.3%
- Jan–Mar 202698 flights63.4%
- Apr–Jun 202679 flights71.1%
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 66.0% on time across 270 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 90 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 70.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.2%. 11 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 5,894 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
41% 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 5,894 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 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 5,894 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 2,124 minutes out of 5,894, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.07%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.7% 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 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. 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 58.9% on time across 270 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. 270 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 4.07% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 259 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.