Carrier route record

F9MCI→ATL

Frontier Airlines · Kansas City to Atlanta

Flights: 157
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on MCI to ATL draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 157 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,759 at 90.1% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on MCI to ATL runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 170 extra late arrivals.

On time

60.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 155 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.27%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

87.4%

Every carrier on MCI to ATL, 3,281 flights

These figures cover 157 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.8% 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 MCI to ATL

Frontier flew 157 of the 3,281 flights on MCI to ATL, about 5% of it. Its 60.6% on time is 27 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 87.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 90.1% to Frontier at 60.6%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 90.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 78.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 365 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MCI to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	2,759	90.1%	74 min	1.52%	A
Southwest Airlines	365	78.8%	59 min	0.27%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	157	60.6%	86 min	1.27%	D

Delta leads Southwest by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 14 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am2 flights—
11am–2pm94 flights66.3%
2pm–5pm6 flights—
5pm–8pm55 flights52.7%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 45% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.7% on time, against 66.3% 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 94 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on MCI to ATL through the year

Jul–Sep 202532 flights50.0%
Oct–Dec 202542 flights80.5%
Jan–Mar 202635 flights55.9%
Apr–Jun 202648 flights54.2%

Scale runs 40% to 85%. 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 60.6% on time across 157 flights.

Frontier on MCI to ATL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 80.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 50.0%, a swing of 31 points on roughly 39 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 69.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 51.0%. 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 66% of the 5,258 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
66%
National Airspace System
17%
Carrier
17%

66% 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 5,258 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 66 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 5,258 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.27% 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. 14.8% 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.

The 692 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 68.6% on time across 157 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 157 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 MCI to ATL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 157 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 60.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 155 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