Carrier route record

F9TPA→IAD

Frontier Airlines · Tampa to Washington

Flights: 186
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 14%
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 IAD lands a B−, 3 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 186 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

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

On time

80.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 179 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.76%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.7%

Every carrier on TPA to IAD, 1,368 flights

These figures cover 186 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 IAD

Frontier flew 186 of the 1,368 flights on TPA to IAD, about 14% of it. Its 80.4% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.2% to Frontier at 80.4%.

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 IAD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	1,182	84.2%	76 min	0.59%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	186	80.4%	65 min	3.76%	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 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–8am25 flights—
8am–11am27 flights—
11am–2pm44 flights82.5%
2pm–5pm63 flights62.3%
5pm–8pm24 flights—
8pm–5am3 flights—

Scale runs 55% 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 82.5% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 62.3%. 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 63 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on TPA to IAD through the year

Jul–Sep 202559 flights66.7%
Oct–Dec 202550 flights81.6%
Jan–Mar 202643 flights90.0%
Apr–Jun 202634 flights90.9%

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 80.4% on time across 186 flights.

Frontier on TPA to IAD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 90.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 66.7%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 47 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, Friday is the strongest day at 87.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.0%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 2,270 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
41%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
Carrier
18%
Extreme weather
6%

34% 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 2,270 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 2,270 reported delay minutes.

41% 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 927 minutes out of 2,270, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 3.76%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.3% 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 811 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 74.9% on time across 186 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. 186 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 IAD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.76% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 179 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