Carrier route record

F9TPA→BUF

Frontier Airlines · Tampa to Buffalo

Flights: 127
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 17%
Carriers: 2

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

Frontier on TPA to BUF lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 127 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

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

On time

80.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 125 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.79%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.8%

Every carrier on TPA to BUF, 756 flights

These figures cover 127 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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.

Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on TPA to BUF

Frontier flew 127 of the 756 flights on TPA to BUF, about 17% of it. Its 80.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 80.0% to Southwest at 79.8%.

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 TPA to BUF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	127	80.0%	59 min	0.79%	B+
Southwest Airlines	629	79.8%	58 min	1.27%	B

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 127 flights.

5am–8am18 flights—
8am–11am25 flights—
11am–2pm38 flights71.1%
2pm–5pm37 flights75.0%
5pm–8pm9 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 75.0% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.

Across the year

Frontier on TPA to BUF through the year

Jul–Sep 202551 flights82.0%
Oct–Dec 202532 flights83.9%
Jan–Mar 202634 flights70.6%
Apr–Jun 202610 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 90%. 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 80.0% on time across 127 flights.

Frontier on TPA to BUF did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 83.9% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 70.6%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 42 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.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 1,476 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
59%
Carrier
22%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
3%

59% 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 1,476 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 1,476 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.79%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.2% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,053 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 74.2% on time across 127 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 127 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 TPA to BUF

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 127 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 80.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 125 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