Carrier performance at one airport
F9→ATL
Frontier Airlines at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International
- Departures
- 19,734
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Routes
- 25
- Rank here
- #12 of 12
Frontier Airlines at Atlanta draws a D. About one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 19,734 flights, of which United Airlines flew 7,532 at 80.3% on time.
Measured against the airport rather than the country, Frontier Airlines runs 14 points behind the 78.4% weighted average across all carriers at ATL. That is the comparison worth making: every operator here works the same runways, the same airspace and the same weather.
Key figures
On time
64.5%
19,269 completed departures
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed flights only
Cancelled
2.15%
At ATL, this carrier only
Rank here
#12
Of 12 carriers clearing the floor at ATL
These figures cover 20,000 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Against the competition
Every carrier at ATL, ranked
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 80.3% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 19,734 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 7,532 | 80.3% | 83 min | 1.47% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 240,801 | 80.0% | 59 min | 1.60% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 3,218 | 79.4% | 109 min | 4.72% | B− |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,433 | 77.1% | 56 min | 0.77% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 17,795 | 77.1% | 58 min | 1.15% | B |
| Republic Airways | 2,880 | 77.0% | 78 min | 4.24% | B− |
| American Airlines | 6,810 | 76.4% | 102 min | 2.10% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 7,222 | 74.7% | 106 min | 2.26% | C |
| Envoy Air | 1,112 | 73.2% | 69 min | 2.61% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 5,230 | 71.5% | 75 min | 3.14% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 2,575 | 70.7% | 89 min | 3.30% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 19,734 | 64.5% | 82 min | 2.15% | D |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.7% 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.
Route by route
Where Frontier Airlines flies from ATL
Frontier Airlines operates 25 routes out of ATL with enough volume to report. Route records inside one carrier at one airport still spread widely, because a short shuttle and a transcontinental have very different exposure to a late inbound.
| Route | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATL to MCO · Orlando | 1,181 | 65.6% | 112 min | 1.61% | C |
| ATL to PHL · Philadelphia | 1,010 | 62.4% | 84 min | 2.97% | D |
| ATL to FLL · Fort Lauderdale | 928 | 64.2% | 80 min | 2.37% | D |
| ATL to LGA · New York | 888 | 51.8% | 100 min | 5.07% | F− |
| ATL to BWI · Baltimore | 883 | 61.1% | 70 min | 1.93% | D |
| ATL to DFW · Dallas-Fort Worth | 873 | 60.4% | 79 min | 2.29% | D |
| ATL to TPA · Tampa | 870 | 64.9% | 77 min | 1.84% | D |
| ATL to MIA · Miami | 864 | 65.3% | 91 min | 1.62% | C |
| ATL to IAH · Houston | 767 | 68.9% | 82 min | 1.43% | C |
| ATL to DEN · Denver | 738 | 70.9% | 82 min | 1.36% | C |
| ATL to JFK · New York | 735 | 67.1% | 79 min | 2.31% | C |
| ATL to CLE · Cleveland | 714 | 69.8% | 68 min | 2.52% | C |
| ATL to ORD · Chicago | 711 | 62.8% | 111 min | 2.67% | D |
| ATL to EWR · Newark | 708 | 62.4% | 84 min | 2.54% | D |
| ATL to IAD · Washington | 640 | 63.0% | 86 min | 2.19% | D |
| ATL to MDW · Chicago | 599 | 65.2% | 97 min | 1.50% | C |
| ATL to RDU · Raleigh | 571 | 60.2% | 75 min | 2.80% | D |
| ATL to LAS · Las Vegas | 562 | 63.3% | 88 min | 2.31% | D |
| ATL to LAX · Los Angeles | 521 | 69.6% | 63 min | 2.11% | C |
| ATL to DTW · Detroit | 501 | 69.2% | 71 min | 1.40% | C |
| ATL to BOS · Boston | 400 | 66.4% | 57 min | 2.50% | C |
| ATL to SJU · San Juan | 369 | 54.7% | 75 min | 1.63% | F |
| ATL to SFO · San Franciscothin sample | 307 | 66.6% | 71 min | 1.30% | C |
| ATL to CVG · Cincinnatithin sample | 285 | 72.9% | 87 min | 1.75% | C |
| ATL to AUS · Austinthin sample | 275 | 66.5% | 78 min | 3.27% | C− |
Departure window
Best time of day for this operation
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am2,033 flights79.8%
- 8am–11am4,803 flights69.7%
- 11am–2pm1,560 flights72.0%
- 2pm–5pm3,706 flights63.4%
- 5pm–8pm2,105 flights61.2%
- 8pm–5am5,527 flights54.1%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.1% on time, against 79.8% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 5,527 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Seasonal pattern
July is the worst month at 52.7% on time, 26 points below September, the best at 78.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 2,035 flights.
Delay causes
What holds this operation up
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
51% 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 563,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 562,628 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.15% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
19,734 flights sit behind these numbers, which is a large enough sample that the headline rate is not moving on noise. Where a sub-group falls below 30 flights the site shows a dash instead of a percentage.
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 78.4% on time and July 52.7%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 19,269 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
Frontier Airlines at ATL
How often is Frontier Airlines at ATL delayed?
About one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 35.5% of the 19,734 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on Frontier Airlines at ATL?
United Airlines leads at 80.3% on time across 7,532 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 64.5%, a gap of 16 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on Frontier Airlines at ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 79.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 54.1%, 26 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on Frontier Airlines at ATL?
July is the weakest month at 52.7% on time, compared with 78.4% in September. Across the year that is 26 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) all carriers
- ATL to MCO route record65.6%
- ATL to PHL route record62.4%
- ATL to FLL route record64.2%
- ATL to LGA route record51.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.