Carrier route record
F9ATL→RDU
Frontier Airlines · Atlanta to Raleigh
- Flights
- 571
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- 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 RDU 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 571 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on ATL to RDU runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 174 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 555 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.4%
Every carrier on ATL to RDU, 4,617 flights
These figures cover 571 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.9% 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 RDU
Frontier flew 571 of the 4,617 flights on ATL to RDU, about 12% of it. Its 60.2% on time is 20 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 83.6% to Frontier at 60.2%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 247 | 83.6% | 63 min | 1.21% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 3,799 | 83.2% | 56 min | 1.24% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 571 | 60.2% | 75 min | 2.80% | D |
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on ATL to RDU
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 22 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–8am78 flights74.4%
- 8am–11am53 flights62.0%
- 11am–2pm20 flights—
- 2pm–5pm123 flights65.8%
- 5pm–8pm13 flights—
- 8pm–5am284 flights52.2%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.2% on time, against 74.4% for the 5am–8am 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 284 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on ATL to RDU through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 87.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 44.4%. 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 63% of the 16,000 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.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
63% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 63 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 16,491 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 74.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.80%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 15.9% 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 356 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.9% on time across 571 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 571 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 RDU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.80% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 555 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to RDU, every carrier
- Frontier on RDU to ATL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to RDU83.6%
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to RDU83.2%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.