Carrier route record
F9ATL→AUS
Frontier Airlines · Atlanta to Austin
- Flights
- 275
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on ATL to AUS draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 275 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,036 at 81.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on ATL to AUS runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 111 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 266 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.27%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.8%
Every carrier on ATL to AUS, 4,545 flights
These figures cover 275 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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.
Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on ATL to AUS
Frontier flew 275 of the 4,545 flights on ATL to AUS, about 6% of it. Its 66.5% on time is 13 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 81.9% to American at 0.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,036 | 81.9% | 49 min | 0.58% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 3,233 | 80.2% | 57 min | 1.48% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 275 | 66.5% | 78 min | 3.27% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 35 min | 0.00% | F+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 81.9%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on ATL to AUS
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 275 flights.
- 5am–8am8 flights—
- 8am–11am15 flights—
- 11am–2pm60 flights73.3%
- 2pm–5pm189 flights63.9%
- 5pm–8pm3 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 73.3% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 63.9%. 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 189 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on ATL to AUS through the year
- Jul–Sep 202559 flights54.7%
- Oct–Dec 202564 flights61.9%
- Jan–Mar 202670 flights78.3%
- Apr–Jun 202682 flights67.9%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. 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 66.5% on time across 275 flights.
Frontier on ATL to AUS did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 78.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 54.7%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 69 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 82.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 53.3%. 29 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 6,955 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
47% 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 6,955 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 6,955 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.27%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.0% 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.
The 813 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 52.1% on time across 275 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 275 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 ATL to AUS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.27% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 266 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to AUS, every carrier
- Frontier on AUS to ATL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to AUS81.9%
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to AUS80.2%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.