Carrier route record
F9DFW→ATL
Frontier Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Atlanta
- Flights
- 876
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DFW to ATL draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 876 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,792 at 82.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on DFW to ATL runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 120 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 854 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.8%
Every carrier on DFW to ATL, 6,703 flights
These figures cover 876 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 DFW to ATL
Frontier flew 876 of the 6,703 flights on DFW to ATL, about 13% of it. Its 65.6% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.8% to Frontier at 65.6%. Three 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 82.8% of the time; American Airlines manages 71.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,635 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,792 | 82.8% | 82 min | 2.54% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 84 | 81.5% | 49 min | 2.38% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 300 | 72.9% | 66 min | 2.67% | C |
| American Airlines | 2,635 | 71.9% | 71 min | 3.19% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 16 | 66.7% | 58 min | 6.25% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 876 | 65.6% | 68 min | 2.40% | C |
American Airlines cancels 3.2% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on DFW 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 33 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am316 flights59.4%
- 8am–11am221 flights81.9%
- 11am–2pm43 flights74.4%
- 2pm–5pm128 flights63.7%
- 5pm–8pm134 flights49.2%
- 8pm–5am34 flights76.5%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.2% on time, against 81.9% 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 316 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DFW to ATL through the year
July is the worst month at 42.9% on time, 39 points below September, the best at 81.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 74.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 56.3%. 18 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 46% 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
46% 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 12 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 20,065 reported delay minutes.
33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 6,585 minutes out of 20,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.40% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
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. 11.4% 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 731 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 60.4% on time across 873 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. 876 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 DFW to ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 876 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 65.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 854 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to ATL, every carrier
- Frontier on ATL to DFW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DFW to ATL82.8%
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to ATL72.9%
- American Airlines on DFW to ATL71.9%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.