Carrier route record

F9RSW→PHL

Frontier Airlines · Fort Myers to Philadelphia

Flights: 302
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 22%
Carriers: 2

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

Frontier on RSW to PHL draws a D−. About 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 302 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on RSW to PHL runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 127 extra late arrivals.

On time

64.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 288 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.64%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.0%

Every carrier on RSW to PHL, 1,343 flights

These figures cover 302 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% 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 RSW to PHL

Frontier flew 302 of the 1,343 flights on RSW to PHL, about 22% of it. Its 64.9% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 74.1% to Frontier at 64.9%.

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 RSW to PHL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	1,041	74.1%	113 min	2.98%	C
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	302	64.9%	72 min	4.64%	D−

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 20 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–8am5 flights—
8am–11am50 flights79.2%
11am–2pm113 flights63.6%
2pm–5pm4 flights—
5pm–8pm11 flights—
8pm–5am119 flights59.5%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.5% on time, against 79.2% for the 8am–11am 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 119 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on RSW to PHL through the year

Jul–Sep 202545 flights75.6%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights70.7%
Jan–Mar 2026113 flights54.3%
Apr–Jun 202665 flights68.3%

Scale runs 45% to 80%. 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 64.9% on time across 302 flights.

Frontier on RSW to PHL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 75.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 54.3%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 76 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 50.0%. 24 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 60% of the 7,273 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
60%
Carrier
24%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
1%

60% 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 7,273 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 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 7,273 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 79.2% on time here.

Cancellations run at 4.64%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 12.5% 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 993 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 68.9% on time across 302 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 302 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 RSW to PHL

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.64% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 288 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