Carrier route record
F9ATL→MCO
Frontier Airlines · Atlanta to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,270
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on ATL to MCO draws a D. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,270 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,095 at 74.5% on time.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 74.5% on time across 1,095 flights.
Key figures
On time
64.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,239 completed flights
Avg delay
117 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.20%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.3%
Every carrier on ATL to MCO, 8,267 flights
These figures cover 1,270 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on ATL to MCO
Frontier flew 1,270 of the 8,267 flights on ATL to MCO, about 15% of it. Its 64.8% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 74.5% to Frontier at 64.8%.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,095 | 74.5% | 60 min | 1.19% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 368 | 73.5% | 87 min | 4.62% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 5,534 | 70.5% | 65 min | 1.32% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 1,270 | 64.8% | 117 min | 2.20% | D |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.6% 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 ATL to MCO
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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 33 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am198 flights81.6%
- 8am–11am254 flights77.4%
- 11am–2pm173 flights77.1%
- 2pm–5pm143 flights58.9%
- 5pm–8pm176 flights48.8%
- 8pm–5am326 flights49.1%
Scale runs 40% to 85%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.8% on time, against 81.6% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 326 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on ATL to MCO through the year
July is the worst month at 49.1% on time, 26 points below September, the best at 75.0%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 125 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 76.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 53.7%, a spread of 23 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on ATL to MCO runs when it is late
The 436 late arrivals split 105 under half an hour, 115 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 216 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early283 flights22.8%
- Within 15 min520 flights42.0%
- 15–29 min late105 flights8.5%
- 30–59 min late115 flights9.3%
- 1–2 hours late103 flights8.3%
- 2+ hours late113 flights9.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,239 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
80 of 475 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 41 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on ATL to MCO
The latest arrival of the period was on 23 June 2026, 20 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 23 June 2026 | 20 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 July 2026 | 20 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 February 2026 | 16 hours 25 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 March 2026 | 16 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 October 2025 | 16 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 65% of the 51,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 65%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
65% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 51,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 65 to one. The split is drawn from 50,911 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 81.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.20% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.24%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
17.4% 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 404 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 runs 67.2% on time across 1,266 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,270 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Frontier on ATL to MCO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 75.0% on time and July 49.1%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,239 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to MCO, every carrier
- Frontier on MCO to ATL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to MCO74.5%
- Spirit Airlines on ATL to MCO73.5%
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to MCO70.5%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.