Carrier route record

F9SFO→DFW

Frontier Airlines · San Francisco to Dallas-Fort Worth

Flights: 217
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 4

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

Frontier on SFO to DFW draws a D−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 217 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 916 at 75.5% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Frontier on SFO to DFW runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 130 extra late arrivals.

On time

64.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 207 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.15%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

73.1%

Every carrier on SFO to DFW, 4,262 flights

These figures cover 217 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

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Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on SFO to DFW

Frontier flew 217 of the 4,262 flights on SFO to DFW, about 5% of it. Its 64.3% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 75.5% to Frontier at 64.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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	916	75.5%	55 min	0.55%	B+
American Airlines	3,094	73.0%	95 min	2.62%	C
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	35	70.6%	60 min	2.86%	C
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	217	64.3%	52 min	4.15%	D−

No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 75.5%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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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 217 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 64.3% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Frontier on SFO to DFW through the year

Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
Oct–Dec 202546 flights62.2%
Jan–Mar 202619 flights—
Apr–Jun 202668 flights57.1%
Jul–Sep 202667 flights79.7%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. 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 64.3% on time across 217 flights.

Frontier on SFO to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 79.7% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 57.1%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 72 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 73.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 56.4%, a spread of 17 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Frontier on SFO to DFW runs when it is late

The 74 late arrivals split 32 under half an hour, 30 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.

15+ min early39 flights18.8%
Within 15 min94 flights45.4%
15–29 min late32 flights15.5%
30–59 min late30 flights14.5%
1–2 hours late8 flights3.9%
2+ hours late4 flights1.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 207 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 87 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 28 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 15 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DFW.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on SFO to DFW

The latest arrival of the period was on 5 June 2026, 10 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on SFO to DFW in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
5 June 2026	10 hours 18 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
20 November 2025	4 hours 25 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
25 May 2026	2 hours 26 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
30 June 2026	2 hours 8 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
23 December 2025	1 hour 58 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 70% of the 3,860 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
70%
National Airspace System
17%
Carrier
13%
Extreme weather
0%

70% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,860 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 70 to one. The split is drawn from 3,860 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 4.15%, against 1.89% 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

5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 53.6% on time across 219 flights, 11 points below 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 11 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 217 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 4.15% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you roughly 50 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. 207 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures