Carrier route record
F9BNA→MCO
Frontier Airlines · Nashville to Orlando
- Flights
- 136
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on BNA to MCO 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 a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 136 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 713 at 78.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on BNA to MCO 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 136 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.0%
Every carrier on BNA to MCO, 3,465 flights
These figures cover 136 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% 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 BNA to MCO
Frontier flew 136 of the 3,465 flights on BNA to MCO, about 4% of it. Its 73.5% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 78.2% 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: 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 713 | 78.2% | 84 min | 4.63% | B− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 29 | 75.9% | 48 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,587 | 74.2% | 51 min | 0.77% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 136 | 73.5% | 81 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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.
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 136 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am8 flights—
- 11am–2pm42 flights73.8%
- 2pm–5pm11 flights—
- 5pm–8pm72 flights76.4%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 76.4% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.
Across the year
Frontier on BNA to MCO through the year
- Jul–Sep 202516 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202522 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202630 flights66.7%
- Apr–Jun 202668 flights77.9%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. 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 73.5% on time across 136 flights.
Split by quarter, Frontier on BNA to MCO logged 16 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 22 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 30 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 68 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 73.5% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 74% of the 2,921 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.
- 74%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 11%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
74% 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 2,921 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 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 2,921 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
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. 12.5% 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 616 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 77.9% on time across 136 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. 136 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 BNA to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 136 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. 136 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to MCO, every carrier
- Frontier on MCO to BNA, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on BNA to MCO78.2%
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to MCO74.2%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.