Carrier route record

F9CVG→ATL

Frontier Airlines · Cincinnati to Atlanta

Flights: 288
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on CVG to ATL lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 288 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on CVG to ATL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

77.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 283 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.39%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

86.4%

Every carrier on CVG to ATL, 3,017 flights

These figures cover 288 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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 CVG to ATL

Frontier flew 288 of the 3,017 flights on CVG to ATL, about 10% of it. Its 77.4% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 86.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.3% to Frontier at 77.4%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on CVG to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	2,729	87.3%	73 min	1.21%	A
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	288	77.4%	86 min	1.39%	B

Departure window

When Frontier runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 288 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am26 flights—
11am–2pm169 flights79.6%
2pm–5pm15 flights—
5pm–8pm75 flights70.8%
8pm–5am3 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 79.6% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 70.8%. 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 169 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on CVG to ATL through the year

Jul–Sep 202578 flights85.5%
Oct–Dec 202578 flights79.2%
Jan–Mar 202659 flights68.4%
Apr–Jun 202673 flights74.0%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. 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 77.4% on time across 288 flights.

Frontier on CVG to ATL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 85.5% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 68.4%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 72 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 80.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.8%. 12 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 65% of the 5,514 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
65%
National Airspace System
23%
Carrier
11%
Extreme weather
1%

65% 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 5,514 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 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 5,514 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 373 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 72.9% on time across 285 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 288 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 CVG to ATL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 288 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 77.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 283 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