Carrier route record
F9DTW→ATL
Frontier Airlines · Detroit to Atlanta
- Flights
- 501
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 10%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on DTW to ATL draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 501 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 3,703 at 81.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on DTW to ATL runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 123 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 493 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.0%
Every carrier on DTW to ATL, 4,881 flights
These figures cover 501 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% 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 DTW to ATL
Frontier flew 501 of the 4,881 flights on DTW to ATL, about 10% of it. Its 65.3% on time is 14 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.6% to Frontier at 65.3%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.6% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 75.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 677 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 3,703 | 81.6% | 68 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 677 | 75.0% | 74 min | 1.92% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 501 | 65.3% | 107 min | 1.60% | C |
Delta leads Spirit by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on DTW 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 27 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am57 flights84.2%
- 8am–11am71 flights71.4%
- 11am–2pm99 flights60.6%
- 2pm–5pm85 flights72.6%
- 5pm–8pm168 flights56.8%
- 8pm–5am21 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.8% on time, against 84.2% for the 5am–8am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 168 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on DTW to ATL through the year
July is the worst month at 52.5% on time, 32 points below September, the best at 84.6%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 52.7%. 25 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 69% of the 18,000 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.
- 69%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
69% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 69 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 18,261 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 84.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.60% 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. 15.0% 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 594 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 69.2% on time across 501 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 501 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 DTW to ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 501 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 65.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 493 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to ATL, every carrier
- Frontier on ATL to DTW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to ATL81.6%
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to ATL75.0%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.