Carrier route record

F9TPA→CVG

Frontier Airlines · Tampa to Cincinnati

Flights: 374
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 51%
Carriers: 2

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

Frontier on TPA to CVG lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 374 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Frontier on TPA to CVG from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 372 completed flights

Avg delay

87 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.27%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

75.1%

Every carrier on TPA to CVG, 733 flights

These figures cover 374 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on TPA to CVG

Frontier flew 374 of the 733 flights on TPA to CVG, most of the route. Its 78.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 78.5% to Delta at 71.5%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on TPA to CVG
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines (this page)	374	78.5%	87 min	0.27%	B+
Delta Air Linesthin sample	359	71.5%	102 min	1.11%	C

Flight by flight

Frontier flight numbers on TPA to CVG

F9 130307:4586.6% · 276 flights

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am101 flights91.1%
8am–11am75 flights86.7%
11am–2pm26 flights—
2pm–5pm12 flights—
5pm–8pm39 flights71.8%
8pm–5am121 flights65.5%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.1% of the time, against 65.5% for the overnight window. That is 26 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 121 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on TPA to CVG through the year

Jul–Sep 202521 flights—
Oct–Dec 202581 flights72.8%
Jan–Mar 202699 flights67.0%
Apr–Jun 2026111 flights84.7%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights91.9%

Scale runs 60% 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 78.5% on time across 374 flights.

Frontier on TPA to CVG did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 91.9% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 67.0%, a swing of 25 points on roughly 94 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.1%, a spread of 19 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Frontier on TPA to CVG runs when it is late

Frontier on TPA to CVG often beats the schedule: 155 of 372 completed flights, 42%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 80 late arrivals split 27 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 35 an hour or more.

15+ min early155 flights41.7%
Within 15 min137 flights36.8%
15–29 min late27 flights7.3%
30–59 min late18 flights4.8%
1–2 hours late21 flights5.6%
2+ hours late14 flights3.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 372 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 71 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on TPA to CVG

The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 16 hours 19 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on TPA to CVG in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
7 December 2025	16 hours 19 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
28 April 2026	8 hours 7 minutes	Carrier
14 April 2026	5 hours 17 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
25 January 2026	4 hours 25 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
10 May 2026	4 hours 8 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 69% of the 6,973 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
69%
Carrier
23%
National Airspace System
8%

69% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,973 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 69 to one. The split is drawn from 6,973 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 91.1% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, below the national 1.89% 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

9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 773 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 83.0% on time across 372 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 374 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 CVG

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 374 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 78.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 372 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures