Carrier route record
F9ORF→ATL
Frontier Airlines · Norfolk to Atlanta
- Flights
- 218
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on ORF 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 218 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on ORF to ATL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 214 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
85.6%
Every carrier on ORF to ATL, 2,919 flights
These figures cover 218 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 ORF to ATL
Frontier flew 218 of the 2,919 flights on ORF to ATL, about 7% of it. Its 77.1% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 85.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.2% to Frontier at 77.1%.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,701 | 86.2% | 85 min | 1.55% | A |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 218 | 77.1% | 91 min | 1.38% | 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 218 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Frontier's ORF to ATL record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 77.1% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Frontier on ORF to ATL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202538 flights68.4%
- Oct–Dec 202548 flights72.3%
- Jan–Mar 202650 flights75.0%
- Apr–Jun 202682 flights85.2%
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 77.1% on time across 218 flights.
Frontier on ORF to ATL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 85.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 68.4%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 55 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 81.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 66.0%. 16 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 57% of the 4,451 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
57% 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 4,451 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 57 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 4,451 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.38% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.46%.
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. 9.8% 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 516 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 runs 78.1% on time across 218 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 218 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 ORF to ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 218 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 77.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 214 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORF to ATL, every carrier
- Frontier on ATL to ORF, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on ORF to ATL86.2%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- 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.