Carrier route record
F9TPA→CLE
Frontier Airlines · Tampa to Cleveland
- Flights
- 859
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 85%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on TPA to CLE lands a B, about a point 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 859 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on TPA to CLE from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 846 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.16%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.0%
Every carrier on TPA to CLE, 1,005 flights
These figures cover 859 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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 TPA to CLE
Frontier flew 859 of the 1,005 flights on TPA to CLE, most of the route. Its 78.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.0% to Southwest at 60.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 131 | 84.0% | 80 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 859 | 78.6% | 78 min | 1.16% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 15 | 60.0% | 38 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am54 flights86.8%
- 8am–11am204 flights87.6%
- 11am–2pm120 flights87.4%
- 2pm–5pm123 flights67.8%
- 5pm–8pm132 flights76.9%
- 8pm–5am226 flights70.7%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 87.6% of the time, against 67.8% for the afternoon window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 226 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on TPA to CLE through the year
August is the worst month at 67.7% on time, 27 points below September, the best at 95.0%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 106 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 72.0%. 15 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 69% of the 14,000 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.
- 69%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
69% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 32 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 14,025 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 87.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.16% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.
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. 10.9% 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 927 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 77.6% on time across 857 flights, within about 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. 859 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 CLE
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 859 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 78.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 846 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to CLE, every carrier
- Frontier on CLE to TPA, the return leg
- United Airlines on TPA to CLE84.0%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.