Carrier route record
F9TPA→ATL
Frontier Airlines · Tampa to Atlanta
- Flights
- 867
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on TPA to ATL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 867 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 4,413 at 81.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on TPA to ATL runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 41 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 853 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.9%
Every carrier on TPA to ATL, 6,138 flights
These figures cover 867 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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 TPA to ATL
Frontier flew 867 of the 6,138 flights on TPA to ATL, about 14% of it. Its 73.5% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.7% to Frontier at 73.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 4,413 | 81.7% | 75 min | 1.22% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 126 | 80.2% | 101 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 732 | 76.9% | 59 min | 1.37% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 867 | 73.5% | 61 min | 1.50% | C |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 81.7%, 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 TPA 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 22 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am321 flights82.9%
- 8am–11am111 flights82.7%
- 11am–2pm47 flights65.2%
- 2pm–5pm91 flights74.4%
- 5pm–8pm148 flights61.1%
- 8pm–5am149 flights60.5%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.5% on time, against 82.9% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 321 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on TPA to ATL through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 92.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 66.4%. 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 43% of the 14,000 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
- 39%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
- 4%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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 13,728 reported delay minutes.
39% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 5,375 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.50% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 406 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 64.9% on time across 870 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 867 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 TPA to ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 867 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 73.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 853 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to ATL, every carrier
- Frontier on ATL to TPA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on TPA to ATL81.7%
- Spirit Airlines on TPA to ATL80.2%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to ATL76.9%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.