Carrier route record

F9SFO→DFW

Frontier Airlines · San Francisco to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 184
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 4

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

Frontier on SFO to DFW earns a D−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 55.7% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 22 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average about 55 minutes. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 184 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 854 at 77.4% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on SFO to DFW runs 22 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 219 extra late arrivals.

On time

55.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 176 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.80%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.5%

Every carrier on SFO to DFW, 4,127 flights

These figures cover 184 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% 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 SFO to DFW

Frontier flew 184 of the 4,127 flights on SFO to DFW, about 4% of it. Its 55.7% on time is 18 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.4% to Frontier at 55.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on SFO to DFW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	854	77.4%	54 min	0.47%	B+
American Airlines	3,072	73.4%	100 min	2.80%	C
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	17	62.5%	81 min	5.88%	D−
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	184	55.7%	55 min	3.80%	D−

No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 77.4%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When Frontier runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 184 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Frontier's SFO to DFW record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 55.7% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Frontier on SFO to DFW through the year

Jul–Sep 202551 flights46.9%
Oct–Dec 202546 flights62.2%
Jan–Mar 202619 flights—
Apr–Jun 202668 flights57.1%

Scale runs 40% to 70%. 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 55.7% on time across 184 flights.

Frontier on SFO to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 62.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 46.9%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 61 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 67.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 44.4%. 23 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 72% of the 4,266 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
72%
National Airspace System
17%
Carrier
11%
Extreme weather
0%

72% 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 4,266 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 72 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 4,266 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 3.80%, 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

8.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,464 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 59.0% on time across 185 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. 184 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 SFO to DFW

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.80% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 55 minutes; 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. 176 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