Carrier route record
F9TPA→CLT
Frontier Airlines · Tampa to Charlotte
- Flights
- 141
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- 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 CLT lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 141 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's TPA to CLT record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 138 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.13%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.9%
Every carrier on TPA to CLT, 3,204 flights
These figures cover 141 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 CLT
Frontier flew 141 of the 3,204 flights on TPA to CLT, about 4% of it. Its 81.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 83.1% to Spirit at 79.3%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 2,981 | 83.1% | 76 min | 1.58% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 141 | 81.9% | 92 min | 2.13% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 82 | 79.3% | 89 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 11 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–8am58 flights87.5%
- 8am–11am16 flights—
- 11am–2pm13 flights—
- 2pm–5pm11 flights—
- 5pm–8pm43 flights76.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.5% of the time, against 76.2% for the evening window. That is 11 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 58 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on TPA to CLT through the year
- Jul–Sep 202545 flights80.0%
- Oct–Dec 202536 flights82.9%
- Jan–Mar 202639 flights83.8%
- Apr–Jun 202621 flights—
Scale runs 70% 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 81.9% on time across 141 flights.
Quarter by quarter Frontier on TPA to CLT held fairly steady: 80.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 82.9% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 83.8% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 96.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.1%. 20 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 2,303 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
- 20%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%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 2,303 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 69 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 2,303 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.13% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.0% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 507 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 70.1% on time across 142 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 141 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 CLT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 141 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 81.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 138 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to CLT, every carrier
- Frontier on CLT to TPA, the return leg
- American Airlines on TPA to CLT83.1%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) 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.