Carrier route record

F9ATL→PHX

Frontier Airlines · Atlanta to Phoenix

Flights: 214
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
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 PHX draws a C+. About 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 214 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 614 at 79.2% on time.

American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.2% on time across 614 flights.

On time

67.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 211 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.93%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.4%

Every carrier on ATL to PHX, 3,762 flights

These figures cover 214 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% 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 PHX

Frontier flew 214 of the 3,762 flights on ATL to PHX, about 6% of it. Its 67.8% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 79.2% to Frontier at 67.8%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 79.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 72.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 633 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	614	79.2%	94 min	0.49%	B+
Delta Air Lines	2,301	76.0%	59 min	0.87%	B+
Southwest Airlines	633	72.0%	48 min	0.32%	C+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	214	67.8%	74 min	0.93%	C+

American leads Southwest by 7 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am22 flights—
8am–11am40 flights64.1%
11am–2pm70 flights66.2%
2pm–5pm23 flights—
5pm–8pm15 flights—
8pm–5am44 flights52.3%

Scale runs 45% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.3% on time, against 66.2% for the 11am–2pm 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 70 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on ATL to PHX through the year

Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
Oct–Dec 202543 flights64.3%
Jan–Mar 202656 flights80.0%
Apr–Jun 202685 flights65.9%

Scale runs 55% 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 67.8% on time across 214 flights.

Frontier on ATL to PHX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 80.0% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 64.3%, a swing of 16 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 77.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 61.5%. 16 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. Carrier accounts for 51% of the 5,006 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.

Carrier
51%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
9%

The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 2,563 of the 5,006 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,006 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 0.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.47%.

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. 10.0% 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 1,587 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.2% on time across 215 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 214 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 PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 214 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 67.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 211 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