Carrier route record

F9ATL→CMH

Frontier Airlines · Atlanta to Columbus

Flights: 134
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
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 CMH earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 57.3% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 20 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average about an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 134 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on ATL to CMH runs 20 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 203 extra late arrivals.

On time

57.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 131 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.24%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.5%

Every carrier on ATL to CMH, 3,159 flights

These figures cover 134 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.7% 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 CMH

Frontier flew 134 of the 3,159 flights on ATL to CMH, about 4% of it. Its 57.3% on time is 23 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 83.3% to Frontier at 57.3%. Two 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.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to CMH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	6	83.3%	115 min	0.00%	B+
Delta Air Lines	2,693	82.1%	54 min	1.52%	B
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	326	76.5%	49 min	0.61%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	134	57.3%	63 min	2.24%	D

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 13 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–8am—
8am–11am59 flights47.4%
11am–2pm11 flights—
2pm–5pm54 flights60.4%
5pm–8pm10 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 40% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 60.4% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 47.4%. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 59 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on ATL to CMH through the year

Jul–Sep 202527 flights—
Oct–Dec 202528 flights—
Jan–Mar 202637 flights48.6%
Apr–Jun 202642 flights75.6%

Scale runs 40% 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 57.3% on time across 134 flights.

Split by quarter, Frontier on ATL to CMH logged 27 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 28 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 37 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 42 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 57.3% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 52.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 41.7%. 11 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 50% of the 3,531 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
50%
Carrier
39%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
3%

50% 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 3,531 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 3,531 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 1,363 of the 3,531 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 13.7% 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.

At 447 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 51.1% on time across 134 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 134 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 CMH

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 134 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 57.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 131 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