Carrier route record
F9PHL→TPA
Frontier Airlines · Philadelphia to Tampa
- Flights
- 784
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 30%
- 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 TPA sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 784 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on PHL to TPA runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 78 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 767 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.04%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.2%
Every carrier on PHL to TPA, 2,616 flights
These figures cover 784 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.7% 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 TPA
Frontier flew 784 of the 2,616 flights on PHL to TPA, about 30% of it. Its 69.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 76.5% to Frontier at 69.8%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 157 | 76.5% | 55 min | 1.27% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,675 | 74.5% | 79 min | 1.97% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 784 | 69.8% | 93 min | 2.04% | 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 25 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–8am139 flights81.6%
- 8am–11am107 flights69.2%
- 11am–2pm97 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm158 flights67.9%
- 5pm–8pm205 flights56.6%
- 8pm–5am78 flights75.3%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.6% on time, against 81.6% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 205 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on PHL to TPA through the year
July is the worst month at 49.0% on time, 42 points below September, the best at 91.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 102 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 62.6%. 20 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 50% of the 22,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
50% 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 22,000 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 21,514 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 81.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.04% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
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. 13.7% 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 920 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 73.1% on time across 783 flights, 3 points above 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 784 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 TPA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 784 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 69.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 767 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to TPA, every carrier
- Frontier on TPA to PHL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on PHL to TPA76.5%
- American Airlines on PHL to TPA74.5%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) 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.