Carrier route record

F9TPA→JFK

Frontier Airlines · Tampa to New York

Flights: 158
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
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 JFK lands a B+, 5 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 roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 158 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,094 at 82.8% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's TPA to JFK record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 45 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 156 completed flights

Avg delay

49 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.63%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.2%

Every carrier on TPA to JFK, 2,298 flights

These figures cover 158 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 JFK

Frontier flew 158 of the 2,298 flights on TPA to JFK, about 7% of it. Its 82.1% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.8% to JetBlue at 77.1%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on TPA to JFK
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	1,094	82.8%	81 min	2.56%	B
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	158	82.1%	49 min	0.63%	B+
JetBlue Airways	1,046	77.1%	74 min	4.02%	B−

JetBlue Airways cancels 4.0% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

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 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am103 flights84.5%
8am–11am30 flights73.3%
11am–2pm25 flights—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 84.5% of the time, against 73.3% for the morning 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 103 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on TPA to JFK through the year

Jul–Sep 202591 flights82.4%
Oct–Dec 202551 flights87.8%
Jan–Mar 202616 flights—

Scale runs 75% 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 82.1% on time across 158 flights.

Split by quarter, Frontier on TPA to JFK logged 91 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 51 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 16 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 82.1% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 1,366 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
42%
National Airspace System
36%
Carrier
20%
Extreme weather
2%

42% 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 1,366 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 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 1,366 reported delay minutes.

36% 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 488 minutes out of 1,366, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, below the national 1.81% 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 1,005 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 67.5% on time across 158 flights, 15 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 15 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 158 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 JFK

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 158 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 82.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 156 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