Carrier route record

F9ATL→CVG

Frontier Airlines · Atlanta to Cincinnati

Flights: 285
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
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 CVG sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 285 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on ATL to CVG runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 47 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 280 completed flights

Avg delay

87 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.75%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.0%

Every carrier on ATL to CVG, 3,013 flights

These figures cover 285 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% 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 CVG

Frontier flew 285 of the 3,013 flights on ATL to CVG, about 9% of it. Its 72.9% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.9% to Frontier at 72.9%.

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 CVG
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	2,728	82.9%	55 min	1.25%	B
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	285	72.9%	87 min	1.75%	C

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 16 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–8am12 flights—
8am–11am93 flights76.3%
11am–2pm23 flights—
2pm–5pm117 flights72.8%
5pm–8pm36 flights60.0%
8pm–5am4 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.0% on time, against 76.3% for the 8am–11am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 117 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on ATL to CVG through the year

Jul–Sep 202578 flights80.3%
Oct–Dec 202576 flights68.0%
Jan–Mar 202659 flights66.7%
Apr–Jun 202672 flights75.0%

Scale runs 60% 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 72.9% on time across 285 flights.

Frontier on ATL to CVG did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 80.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 66.7%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 71 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, Friday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.1%. 15 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 54% of the 6,621 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
54%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
0%

54% 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 6,621 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 6,621 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 2,327 of the 6,621 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.75% 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. 12.5% 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 373 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.4% on time across 288 flights, 5 points above 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 285 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 CVG

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 285 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 72.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 280 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