Carrier route record
F9SLC→DFW
Frontier Airlines · Salt Lake City to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 201
- 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 SLC to DFW lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 201 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,458 at 81.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Frontier on SLC to DFW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 196 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.49%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.8%
Every carrier on SLC to DFW, 3,870 flights
These figures cover 201 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on SLC to DFW
Frontier flew 201 of the 3,870 flights on SLC to DFW, about 5% of it. Its 78.1% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.6% to Envoy at 77.8%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,458 | 81.6% | 64 min | 1.23% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,202 | 78.7% | 105 min | 2.82% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 201 | 78.1% | 67 min | 2.49% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 9 | 77.8% | 46 min | 0.00% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 81.6%, 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am36 flights79.4%
- 11am–2pm32 flights84.4%
- 2pm–5pm40 flights80.0%
- 5pm–8pm37 flights77.8%
- 8pm–5am56 flights72.2%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 84.4% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 72.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 56 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on SLC to DFW through the year
- Jul–Sep 20258 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202541 flights89.7%
- Jan–Mar 202654 flights83.0%
- Apr–Jun 202665 flights73.4%
- Jul–Sep 202633 flights62.5%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. 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 78.1% on time across 201 flights.
Frontier on SLC to DFW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 89.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 62.5%, a swing of 27 points on roughly 50 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, Sunday is the strongest day at 77.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 67.4%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on SLC to DFW runs when it is late
Frontier on SLC to DFW often beats the schedule: 81 of 196 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 43 late arrivals split 13 under half an hour, 16 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 14 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early81 flights41.3%
- Within 15 min72 flights36.7%
- 15–29 min late13 flights6.6%
- 30–59 min late16 flights8.2%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights3.1%
- 2+ hours late8 flights4.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 196 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
10 of 36 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. In the other direction, 17 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 SLC to DFW
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 July 2026, 4 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 July 2026 | 4 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 January 2026 | 4 hours 21 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 24 August 2026 | 2 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 August 2026 | 2 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 July 2026 | 2 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 2,885 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 16%Carrier
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,885 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 to one. The split is drawn from 2,885 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,004 minutes out of 2,885, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.49% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.1% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 989 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 84.8% on time across 201 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 201 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 SLC to DFW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 201 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 78.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 196 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to DFW, every carrier
- Frontier on DFW to SLC, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to DFW81.6%
- American Airlines on SLC to DFW78.7%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.