Carrier route record
F9BUF→ATL
Frontier Airlines · Buffalo to Atlanta
- Flights
- 278
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on BUF to ATL draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 278 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Frontier on BUF to ATL runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 114 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 270 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.4%
Every carrier on BUF to ATL, 1,533 flights
These figures cover 278 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on BUF to ATL
Frontier flew 278 of the 1,533 flights on BUF to ATL, about 18% of it. Its 65.9% on time is 15 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 100.0% to Frontier at 65.9%. 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 | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,254 | 83.6% | 56 min | 1.91% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 278 | 65.9% | 98 min | 2.52% | C |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am10 flights—
- 11am–2pm188 flights71.4%
- 2pm–5pm66 flights54.0%
- 5pm–8pm14 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 71.4% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 54.0%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 188 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on BUF to ATL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202557 flights70.9%
- Jan–Mar 202653 flights57.7%
- Apr–Jun 202689 flights69.0%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights57.6%
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 65.9% on time across 278 flights.
Frontier on BUF to ATL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 70.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 57.6%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 70 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 70.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 57.1%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on BUF to ATL runs when it is late
Frontier on BUF to ATL often beats the schedule: 71 of 270 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 92 late arrivals split 17 under half an hour, 32 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 43 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early71 flights26.3%
- Within 15 min107 flights39.6%
- 15–29 min late17 flights6.3%
- 30–59 min late32 flights11.9%
- 1–2 hours late21 flights7.8%
- 2+ hours late22 flights8.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 270 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
18 of 88 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. In the other direction, 22 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ATL.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on BUF to ATL
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 July 2026, 15 hours 57 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 July 2026 | 15 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 August 2026 | 6 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 March 2026 | 5 hours 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 July 2026 | 5 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 December 2025 | 5 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 68% of the 8,990 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 68%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
68% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,990 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 68 to one. The split is drawn from 8,990 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.52%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
15.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 712 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.
The return leg runs 67.2% on time across 278 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 278 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 BUF to ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 278 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 65.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 270 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.