Carrier route record

F9SJU→TPA

Frontier Airlines · San Juan to Tampa

Flights: 344
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 23%
Carriers: 4

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

Frontier on SJU to TPA sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 344 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 470 at 82.4% on time.

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

On time

74.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 335 completed flights

Avg delay

91 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.33%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.9%

Every carrier on SJU to TPA, 1,478 flights

These figures cover 344 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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 SJU to TPA

Frontier flew 344 of the 1,478 flights on SJU to TPA, about 23% of it. Its 74.0% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 82.4% to Spirit at 55.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 82.4% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 75.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 614 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SJU to TPA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	470	82.4%	64 min	0.85%	B+
JetBlue Airways	614	75.9%	66 min	0.49%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	344	74.0%	91 min	2.33%	C
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	50	55.8%	51 min	14.00%	D−

Southwest leads JetBlue by 7 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 30 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am52 flights84.6%
8am–11am48 flights93.3%
11am–2pm20 flights—
2pm–5pm98 flights70.8%
5pm–8pm110 flights63.6%
8pm–5am16 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 93.3% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 110 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on SJU to TPA through the year

Jul–Sep 202565 flights59.7%
Oct–Dec 202597 flights77.1%
Jan–Mar 202684 flights81.2%
Apr–Jun 202698 flights74.2%

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 74.0% on time across 344 flights.

Frontier on SJU to TPA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 81.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 59.7%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 86 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 Thursday the weakest at 69.8%. 11 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 74% of the 7,928 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
74%
Carrier
21%
National Airspace System
5%

74% 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 7,928 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 74 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 7,928 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 93.3% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.33% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.

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. 10.7% 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 1,237 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 73.4% on time across 342 flights, within half 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. 344 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 SJU to TPA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 344 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 74.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 335 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