Carrier route record

F9TPA→RDU

Frontier Airlines · Tampa to Raleigh

Flights: 249
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 19%
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 RDU lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 249 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 649 at 86.2% on time.

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

On time

76.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 243 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.01%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.8%

Every carrier on TPA to RDU, 1,280 flights

These figures cover 249 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 RDU

Frontier flew 249 of the 1,280 flights on TPA to RDU, about 19% of it. Its 76.5% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.2% to Frontier at 76.5%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 86.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 77.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 382 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on TPA to RDU
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	649	86.2%	85 min	2.00%	A
Southwest Airlines	382	77.8%	54 min	0.79%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	249	76.5%	76 min	2.01%	B

Delta leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 16 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am34 flights82.4%
8am–11am47 flights88.6%
11am–2pm54 flights72.2%
2pm–5pm98 flights72.9%
5pm–8pm16 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% 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 72.2% on time against 88.6% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 98 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on TPA to RDU through the year

Jul–Sep 202565 flights70.3%
Oct–Dec 202559 flights75.9%
Jan–Mar 202661 flights75.9%
Apr–Jun 202664 flights84.1%

Scale runs 60% 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 76.5% on time across 249 flights.

Frontier on TPA to RDU did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 84.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 70.3%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 62 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 83.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.8%. 19 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 4,336 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
42%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
1%

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 4,336 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 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 4,336 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,524 of the 4,336 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.40%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.8% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 587 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 runs 75.6% on time across 249 flights, within about a point 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. 249 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 RDU

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 249 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 76.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 243 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