Carrier route record
F9CMH→ATL
Frontier Airlines · Columbus to Atlanta
- Flights
- 134
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on CMH to ATL earns an F, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 51.1% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 26 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average about an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 134 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on CMH to ATL runs 26 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 265 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
51.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 131 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
85.9%
Every carrier on CMH to ATL, 3,160 flights
These figures cover 134 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.8% 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 CMH to ATL
Frontier flew 134 of the 3,160 flights on CMH to ATL, about 4% of it. Its 51.1% on time is 35 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 85.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 88.2% to Frontier at 51.1%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,693 | 88.2% | 92 min | 1.56% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 7 | 85.7% | 206 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 326 | 81.7% | 46 min | 0.92% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 134 | 51.1% | 65 min | 2.24% | F |
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 11 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–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm59 flights57.9%
- 2pm–5pm12 flights—
- 5pm–8pm54 flights47.2%
- 8pm–5am9 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 47.2% on time, against 57.9% 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 59 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on CMH to ATL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202527 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202528 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202637 flights57.1%
- Apr–Jun 202642 flights51.2%
Scale runs 45% to 65%. 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 51.1% on time across 134 flights.
Split by quarter, Frontier on CMH to ATL logged 27 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 28 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 37 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 42 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 51.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 58.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 47.2%. 11 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 64% of the 4,136 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.
- 64%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 9%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
64% 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 4,136 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 64 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 4,136 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.24% 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. 16.8% 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 447 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 57.3% on time across 134 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 134 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 CMH to ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 134 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 51.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 131 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CMH to ATL, every carrier
- Frontier on ATL to CMH, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on CMH to ATL88.2%
- Southwest Airlines on CMH to ATL81.7%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) 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.