Carrier route record
F9ATL→BUF
Frontier Airlines · Atlanta to Buffalo
- Flights
- 278
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on ATL to BUF draws a C. About one flight in three arrives 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 278 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Frontier on ATL to BUF runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 101 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 271 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.9%
Every carrier on ATL to BUF, 1,534 flights
These figures cover 278 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on ATL to BUF
Frontier flew 278 of the 1,534 flights on ATL to BUF, about 18% of it. Its 67.2% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.1% to Southwest at 0.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,255 | 79.1% | 55 min | 1.75% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 278 | 67.2% | 84 min | 2.52% | C |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 92 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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 278 flights.
- 5am–8am10 flights—
- 8am–11am194 flights70.3%
- 11am–2pm60 flights61.4%
- 2pm–5pm14 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 75%. 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 61.4% on time against 70.3% 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 194 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on ATL to BUF through the year
- Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202557 flights65.5%
- Jan–Mar 202653 flights57.7%
- Apr–Jun 202689 flights73.9%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights59.3%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. 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 67.2% on time across 278 flights.
Frontier on ATL to BUF did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 73.9% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 57.7%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 70 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 80.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 46.9%, a spread of 33 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on ATL to BUF runs when it is late
The 89 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 28 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 40 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early59 flights21.8%
- Within 15 min123 flights45.4%
- 15–29 min late21 flights7.7%
- 30–59 min late28 flights10.3%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights7.4%
- 2+ hours late20 flights7.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 271 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 93 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on ATL to BUF
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 August 2026, 7 hours 8 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 August 2026 | 7 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 March 2026 | 6 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 July 2026 | 5 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 December 2025 | 5 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 April 2026 | 4 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 7,491 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,491 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 to one. The split is drawn from 7,491 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,618 of the 7,491 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.52%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
14.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 712 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 65.9% on time across 278 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. 278 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 BUF
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 278 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 67.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 271 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.