Carrier route record

F9RDU→TPA

Frontier Airlines · Raleigh to Tampa

Flights: 249
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 19%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on RDU to TPA sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 249 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 649 at 84.3% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on RDU to TPA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

75.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 242 completed flights

Avg delay

87 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.81%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.7%

Every carrier on RDU to TPA, 1,280 flights

These figures cover 249 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 RDU to TPA

Frontier flew 249 of the 1,280 flights on RDU to TPA, about 19% of it. Its 75.6% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 84.3% to Frontier at 75.6%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 84.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 77.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 382 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on RDU to TPA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	649	84.3%	79 min	1.85%	B
Southwest Airlines	382	77.9%	46 min	1.57%	B
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	249	75.6%	87 min	2.81%	B

Delta leads Southwest by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am25 flights—
11am–2pm28 flights—
2pm–5pm52 flights69.2%
5pm–8pm63 flights64.4%
8pm–5am81 flights80.0%

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.4% on time, against 80.0% for the 8pm–5am 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 81 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on RDU to TPA through the year

Jul–Sep 202565 flights69.2%
Oct–Dec 202559 flights70.7%
Jan–Mar 202661 flights76.8%
Apr–Jun 202664 flights85.7%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. 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 75.6% on time across 249 flights.

Frontier on RDU to TPA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 85.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 69.2%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 62 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, Friday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.3%. 19 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 59% of the 5,147 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
59%
Carrier
24%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
1%

59% 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 5,147 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 5,147 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 2.81%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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. 9.1% 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 587 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 76.5% on time across 249 flights, within about a point 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. 249 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 RDU to TPA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.81% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 242 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures