Carrier route record

F9BUF→MCO

Frontier Airlines · Buffalo to Orlando

Flights: 303
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 17%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on BUF to MCO sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 303 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 562 at 78.1% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Frontier on BUF to MCO runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 60 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 296 completed flights

Avg delay

98 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.31%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

75.4%

Every carrier on BUF to MCO, 1,813 flights

These figures cover 303 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% 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 BUF to MCO

Frontier flew 303 of the 1,813 flights on BUF to MCO, about 17% of it. Its 71.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 78.1% to Frontier at 71.3%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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.

On-time performance by carrier on BUF to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
JetBlue Airways	562	78.1%	80 min	3.38%	B−
Southwest Airlines	948	75.0%	52 min	0.74%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	303	71.3%	98 min	2.31%	C

JetBlue Airways cancels 3.4% 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.

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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am21 flights—
11am–2pm65 flights84.4%
2pm–5pm19 flights—
5pm–8pm59 flights74.1%
8pm–5am139 flights66.7%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 84.4% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 66.7%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 139 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on BUF to MCO through the year

Jul–Sep 202521 flights—
Oct–Dec 202561 flights71.7%
Jan–Mar 202677 flights75.7%
Apr–Jun 202682 flights79.3%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights54.2%

Scale runs 45% 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 71.3% on time across 303 flights.

Frontier on BUF to MCO did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 79.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 54.2%, a swing of 25 points on roughly 76 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 81.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.5%, a spread of 20 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Frontier on BUF to MCO runs when it is late

Frontier on BUF to MCO often beats the schedule: 103 of 296 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 85 late arrivals split 25 under half an hour, 19 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 41 an hour or more.

15+ min early103 flights34.8%
Within 15 min108 flights36.5%
15–29 min late25 flights8.4%
30–59 min late19 flights6.4%
1–2 hours late23 flights7.8%
2+ hours late18 flights6.1%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 296 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

23 of 99 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on BUF to MCO

The latest arrival of the period was on 29 January 2026, 16 hours 38 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on BUF to MCO in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
29 January 2026	16 hours 38 minutes	Carrier
5 September 2025	14 hours 49 minutes	Carrier
23 January 2026	7 hours 57 minutes	Carrier
28 June 2026	5 hours 46 minutes	Carrier
2 August 2026	3 hours 23 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 8,356 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
48%
Carrier
40%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
1%

48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,356 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 48 to one. The split is drawn from 8,356 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,316 of the 8,356 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.31% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

13.9% 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.

The 1,011 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.

The return leg runs 71.5% on time across 302 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 303 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 BUF to MCO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 303 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 71.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 296 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures