Carrier route record
F9BWI→ATL
Frontier Airlines · Baltimore to Atlanta
- Flights
- 883
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on BWI to ATL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 10 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 883 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,824 at 86.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on BWI to ATL runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 96 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 862 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.6%
Every carrier on BWI to ATL, 5,415 flights
These figures cover 883 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% 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 BWI to ATL
Frontier flew 883 of the 5,415 flights on BWI to ATL, about 16% of it. Its 68.0% on time is 13 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.2% to Frontier at 68.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 86.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 77.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,573 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,824 | 86.2% | 79 min | 2.05% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 135 | 84.3% | 67 min | 0.74% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,573 | 77.4% | 60 min | 1.34% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 883 | 68.0% | 71 min | 2.38% | C |
Delta leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on BWI to ATL
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 35 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am330 flights72.0%
- 8am–11am154 flights84.9%
- 11am–2pm93 flights61.5%
- 2pm–5pm65 flights75.4%
- 5pm–8pm161 flights50.0%
- 8pm–5am80 flights55.1%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 84.9% for the 8am–11am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 330 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on BWI to ATL through the year
July is the worst month at 44.6% on time, 42 points below October, the best at 87.0%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 112 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 56.1%. 17 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 42% of the 20,000 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
42% 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 20,000 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 19,598 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 84.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.38% 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. 11.1% 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 577 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 61.1% on time across 883 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. 883 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 BWI to ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 883 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 68.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 862 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BWI to ATL, every carrier
- Frontier on ATL to BWI, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on BWI to ATL86.2%
- Spirit Airlines on BWI to ATL84.3%
- Southwest Airlines on BWI to ATL77.4%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.