Carrier route record
F9SFO→ATL
Frontier Airlines · San Francisco to Atlanta
- Flights
- 311
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on SFO to ATL draws a D−. Roughly 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 311 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 636 at 85.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Frontier on SFO to ATL runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 161 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 299 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.54%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.2%
Every carrier on SFO to ATL, 3,337 flights
These figures cover 311 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on SFO to ATL
Frontier flew 311 of the 3,337 flights on SFO to ATL, about 9% of it. Its 61.2% on time is 19 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.9% to Frontier at 61.2%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 636 | 85.9% | 50 min | 0.16% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,390 | 81.1% | 70 min | 0.71% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 311 | 61.2% | 73 min | 3.54% | D− |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 85.9%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on SFO to ATL
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 311 flights.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 61.2% on time across 311 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 311 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on SFO to ATL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202521 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202570 flights66.2%
- Jan–Mar 202667 flights71.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights54.5%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights53.3%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. 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 61.2% on time across 311 flights.
Frontier on SFO to ATL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 71.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 53.3%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 78 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 72.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 49.0%, a spread of 24 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on SFO to ATL runs when it is late
The 116 late arrivals split 30 under half an hour, 43 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 43 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early61 flights20.4%
- Within 15 min122 flights40.8%
- 15–29 min late30 flights10.0%
- 30–59 min late43 flights14.4%
- 1–2 hours late24 flights8.0%
- 2+ hours late19 flights6.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 299 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 155 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 49 still arrived on time. 10 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on SFO to ATL
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 July 2026, 12 hours 6 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 July 2026 | 12 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 December 2025 | 11 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 June 2026 | 3 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 May 2026 | 2 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 December 2025 | 2 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 8,427 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
63% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,427 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 to one. The split is drawn from 8,427 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.54%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
14.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 2,139 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.6% on time across 310 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. 311 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 SFO to ATL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.54% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 299 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to ATL, every carrier
- Frontier on ATL to SFO, the return leg
- United Airlines on SFO to ATL85.9%
- Delta Air Lines on SFO to ATL81.1%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.