Carrier route record
F9ATL→MCI
Frontier Airlines · Atlanta to Kansas City
- Flights
- 157
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- 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 MCI sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 157 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,758 at 84.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on ATL to MCI runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 90 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 156 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.8%
Every carrier on ATL to MCI, 3,281 flights
These figures cover 157 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 MCI
Frontier flew 157 of the 3,281 flights on ATL to MCI, about 5% of it. Its 68.6% on time is 14 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Frontier at 68.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 84.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 75.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 365 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,758 | 84.6% | 57 min | 1.38% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 75.9% | 50 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 157 | 68.6% | 77 min | 0.64% | C+ |
Delta leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 157 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am96 flights69.5%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm61 flights67.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 69.5% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.
Across the year
Frontier on ATL to MCI through the year
- Jul–Sep 202532 flights65.6%
- Oct–Dec 202542 flights75.6%
- Jan–Mar 202635 flights71.4%
- Apr–Jun 202648 flights62.5%
Scale runs 55% 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 68.6% on time across 157 flights.
Frontier on ATL to MCI did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 75.6% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 62.5%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 39 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 86.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 56.9%. 30 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 46% of the 3,785 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 42%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
46% 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 3,785 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 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 3,785 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 1,574 of the 3,785 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.64%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
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. 12.2% 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 692 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 60.6% on time across 157 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 157 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 MCI
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 157 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 68.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 156 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to MCI, every carrier
- Frontier on MCI to ATL, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to MCI84.6%
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to MCI75.9%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.