Carrier route record
F9PHL→ATL
Frontier Airlines · Philadelphia to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,008
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on PHL 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 1,008 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 3,029 at 84.9% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 84.9% on time across 3,029 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 978 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.78%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.2%
Every carrier on PHL to ATL, 5,713 flights
These figures cover 1,008 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.3% 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 PHL to ATL
Frontier flew 1,008 of the 5,713 flights on PHL to ATL, about 18% of it. Its 66.4% on time is 13 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 90.1% to Spirit at 60.7%. Two 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 84.9% of the time; American Airlines manages 68.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 594 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 156 | 90.1% | 93 min | 3.21% | A− |
| Delta Air Lines | 3,029 | 84.9% | 59 min | 2.48% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 834 | 82.1% | 68 min | 4.08% | B− |
| American Airlines | 594 | 68.3% | 70 min | 1.85% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 1,008 | 66.4% | 71 min | 2.78% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 60.7% | 66 min | 3.26% | D− |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.1% 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 PHL 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 15 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am285 flights70.1%
- 8am–11am95 flights74.2%
- 11am–2pm239 flights67.2%
- 2pm–5pm84 flights70.2%
- 5pm–8pm276 flights59.4%
- 8pm–5am29 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.4% on time, against 74.2% 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 285 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on PHL to ATL through the year
July is the worst month at 50.0% on time, 39 points below October, the best at 89.4%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 112 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 55.8%. 27 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 43% of the 24,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
43% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 23,500 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 74.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.78%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 12.3% 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 666 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 62.4% on time across 1,010 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,008 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 PHL to ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,008 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 66.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 978 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to ATL, every carrier
- Frontier on ATL to PHL, the return leg
- Republic Airways on PHL to ATL90.1%
- Delta Air Lines on PHL to ATL84.9%
- PSA Airlines on PHL to ATL82.1%
- American Airlines on PHL to ATL68.3%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- 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.