Carrier route record

F9ATL→CLE

Frontier Airlines · Atlanta to Cleveland

Flights: 714
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 21%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on ATL to CLE sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 714 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on ATL to CLE runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 78 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 695 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.52%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.6%

Every carrier on ATL to CLE, 3,407 flights

These figures cover 714 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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 CLE

Frontier flew 714 of the 3,407 flights on ATL to CLE, about 21% of it. Its 69.8% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 83.5% to Frontier at 69.8%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to CLE
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	2,693	83.5%	56 min	1.86%	B
Frontier Airlines (this page)	714	69.8%	68 min	2.52%	C

Flight by flight

Frontier flight numbers on ATL to CLE

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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am63 flights84.1%
8am–11am229 flights75.2%
11am–2pm37 flights83.8%
2pm–5pm98 flights64.6%
5pm–8pm70 flights69.1%
8pm–5am217 flights59.8%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.8% on time, against 84.1% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 229 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on ATL to CLE through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 51.9% on time, against 87.8% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. June was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 79.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 55.9%. 24 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 63% of the 14,000 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
63%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
1%

63% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 45 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 14,321 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 84.1% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.52%, against 1.81% 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.7% 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 554 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 70.6% on time across 714 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. 714 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 CLE

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 714 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 69.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 695 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