Carrier route record

F9ATL→MSP

Frontier Airlines · Atlanta to Minneapolis

Flights: 179
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on ATL to MSP draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 55 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 179 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on ATL to MSP runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 142 extra late arrivals.

On time

63.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 175 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.23%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.2%

Every carrier on ATL to MSP, 3,524 flights

These figures cover 179 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 MSP

Frontier flew 179 of the 3,524 flights on ATL to MSP, about 5% of it. Its 63.4% on time is 18 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.1% to Frontier at 63.4%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	3,221	82.1%	56 min	0.37%	B+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	124	80.5%	69 min	0.81%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	179	63.4%	55 min	2.23%	D

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 179 flights.

5am–8am5 flights—
8am–11am106 flights62.1%
11am–2pm56 flights63.6%
2pm–5pm12 flights—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 63.6% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.

Across the year

Frontier on ATL to MSP through the year

Jul–Sep 202548 flights69.6%
Oct–Dec 202533 flights63.6%
Jan–Mar 202632 flights58.1%
Apr–Jun 202666 flights61.5%

Scale runs 50% to 75%. 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 63.4% on time across 179 flights.

Frontier on ATL to MSP did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 69.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 58.1%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 45 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 66.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.8%. 8 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 3,493 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
46%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
2%

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 3,493 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 3,493 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 1,236 of the 3,493 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.23% 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. 11.4% 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 907 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 56.6% on time across 179 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 179 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 MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 179 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 63.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 175 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