Carrier route record
F9DEN→ATL
Frontier Airlines · Denver to Atlanta
- Flights
- 744
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DEN to ATL lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 744 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,805 at 86.3% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 86.3% on time across 2,805 flights.
Key figures
On time
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 736 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.0%
Every carrier on DEN to ATL, 5,596 flights
These figures cover 744 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on DEN to ATL
Frontier flew 744 of the 5,596 flights on DEN to ATL, about 13% of it. Its 78.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.3% to Southwest at 66.3%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 86.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 66.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,080 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,805 | 86.3% | 71 min | 1.07% | A |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 744 | 78.9% | 61 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 967 | 78.0% | 64 min | 0.31% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,080 | 66.3% | 54 min | 0.83% | C+ |
The spread between Delta and Southwest is 20 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 20 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on DEN 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 19 points, against 20 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am86 flights84.7%
- 8am–11am56 flights66.1%
- 11am–2pm211 flights81.8%
- 2pm–5pm59 flights83.1%
- 5pm–8pm5 flights—
- 8pm–5am327 flights77.6%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 84.7% of the time, against 66.1% for the morning window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 327 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DEN to ATL through the year
November is the best month on the calendar at 93.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. June was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 73.5%. 14 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. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 9,438 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.
- 50%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 4,732 of the 9,438 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,438 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 84.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.81%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.1% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,199 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 70.9% on time across 738 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 744 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 DEN to ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 744 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 78.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 736 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to ATL, every carrier
- Frontier on ATL to DEN, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DEN to ATL86.3%
- United Airlines on DEN to ATL78.0%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to ATL66.3%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- 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.