Carrier route record
F9ATL→MSY
Frontier Airlines · Atlanta to New Orleans
- Flights
- 231
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on ATL to MSY draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 231 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on ATL to MSY runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 140 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 228 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.4%
Every carrier on ATL to MSY, 4,052 flights
These figures cover 231 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% 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 MSY
Frontier flew 231 of the 4,052 flights on ATL to MSY, about 6% of it. Its 63.6% on time is 18 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Frontier at 63.6%. Three 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 3,275 | 83.2% | 58 min | 1.53% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 363 | 78.1% | 46 min | 0.28% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 180 | 76.6% | 76 min | 2.78% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 231 | 63.6% | 74 min | 1.30% | 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 231 flights.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am38 flights62.2%
- 11am–2pm4 flights—
- 2pm–5pm156 flights63.0%
- 5pm–8pm22 flights—
- 8pm–5am10 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 63.0% on time. The full set of windows spans about a point.
Across the year
Frontier on ATL to MSY through the year
- Jul–Sep 202534 flights64.7%
- Oct–Dec 202545 flights59.1%
- Jan–Mar 202670 flights68.6%
- Apr–Jun 202682 flights61.2%
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 63.6% on time across 231 flights.
Quarter by quarter Frontier on ATL to MSY held fairly steady: 64.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 59.1% in Oct–Dec 2025, 68.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 61.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 71.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 42.3%. 29 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 60% of the 6,122 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.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
60% 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 6,122 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 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 6,122 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.30% 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. 13.6% 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 425 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 56.8% on time across 232 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. 231 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 MSY
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 231 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 63.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 228 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to MSY, every carrier
- Frontier on MSY to ATL, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to MSY83.2%
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to MSY78.1%
- Spirit Airlines on ATL to MSY76.6%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) 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.