Carrier route record
F9PHX→DFW
Frontier Airlines · Phoenix to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 567
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on PHX to DFW lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 567 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on PHX to DFW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 553 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.9%
Every carrier on PHX to DFW, 5,167 flights
These figures cover 567 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 PHX to DFW
Frontier flew 567 of the 5,167 flights on PHX to DFW, about 11% of it. Its 79.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Frontier at 79.0%. Three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 12 | 91.7% | 24 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 10 | 90.0% | 61 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 4,577 | 80.0% | 78 min | 2.75% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 567 | 79.0% | 91 min | 1.76% | B |
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 19 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–8am177 flights86.7%
- 8am–11am36 flights88.6%
- 11am–2pm171 flights78.4%
- 2pm–5pm102 flights72.3%
- 5pm–8pm66 flights69.4%
- 8pm–5am15 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.6% of the time, against 69.4% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 177 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on PHX to DFW through the year
April is the best month on the calendar at 87.5% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.4%. 13 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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 31%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
34% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 34 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 10,556 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 3,621 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.76% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.71%.
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. 9.9% 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 868 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 runs 76.8% on time across 567 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 567 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 PHX to DFW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 567 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 79.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 553 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to DFW, every carrier
- Frontier on DFW to PHX, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHX to DFW80.0%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.