Carrier route record

F9TPA→IAD

Frontier Airlines · Tampa to Washington

Flights: 178
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 14%
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 IAD earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 178 flights, with a median arrival 17 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's TPA to IAD record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 94 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 173 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.81%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

85.8%

Every carrier on TPA to IAD, 1,288 flights

These figures cover 178 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 17 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.

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

Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on TPA to IAD

Frontier flew 178 of the 1,288 flights on TPA to IAD, about 14% of it. Its 86.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 86.7% to United at 85.6%.

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
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	178	86.7%	74 min	2.81%	A
United Airlines	1,110	85.6%	72 min	0.72%	A+

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 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 178 flights.

5am–8am25 flights—
8am–11am60 flights88.1%
11am–2pm44 flights82.5%
2pm–5pm22 flights—
5pm–8pm24 flights—
8pm–5am3 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 82.5% on time against 88.1% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 60 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on TPA to IAD through the year

Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
Oct–Dec 202550 flights81.6%
Jan–Mar 202643 flights90.0%
Apr–Jun 202634 flights90.9%
Jul–Sep 202634 flights79.4%

Scale runs 70% 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 86.7% on time across 178 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 2026 at 79.4%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 45 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 91.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 86.7%, a spread of 5 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

Frontier on TPA to IAD often beats the schedule: 93 of 173 completed flights, 54%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 23 late arrivals split 6 under half an hour, 9 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 8 an hour or more.

15+ min early93 flights53.8%
Within 15 min57 flights32.9%
15–29 min late6 flights3.5%
30–59 min late9 flights5.2%
1–2 hours late2 flights1.2%
2+ hours late6 flights3.5%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 173 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

5 of 21 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. 7 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on TPA to IAD

The latest arrival of the period was on 13 March 2026, 4 hours 22 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 IAD in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
13 March 2026	4 hours 22 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
29 August 2026	3 hours 7 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
31 July 2026	3 hours 1 minute	Late-arriving aircraft
9 November 2025	2 hours 19 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
20 November 2025	2 hours 17 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 1,696 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
57%
National Airspace System
23%
Carrier
20%

57% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,696 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 57 to one. The split is drawn from 1,696 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 88.1% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.81%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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.

The return leg runs 84.9% on time across 178 flights, within 2 points 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. 178 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 2.81% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 173 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