Carrier route record
F9CLT→MCO
Frontier Airlines · Charlotte to Orlando
- Flights
- 589
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on CLT 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 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 589 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 471 at 70.5% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on CLT to MCO runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 57 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 572 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.6%
Every carrier on CLT to MCO, 4,736 flights
These figures cover 589 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.3% 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 CLT to MCO
Frontier flew 589 of the 4,736 flights on CLT to MCO, about 12% of it. Its 71.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 71.9% to American at 70.4%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 589 | 71.9% | 94 min | 2.72% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 471 | 70.5% | 64 min | 4.03% | C− |
| American Airlines | 3,676 | 70.4% | 73 min | 1.66% | C |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.0% 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 46 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am3 flights—
- 8am–11am59 flights82.8%
- 11am–2pm97 flights88.4%
- 2pm–5pm134 flights71.0%
- 5pm–8pm81 flights42.9%
- 8pm–5am215 flights72.1%
Scale runs 35% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 42.9% on time, against 88.4% for the 11am–2pm 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 215 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on CLT to MCO through the year
July is the worst month at 46.7% on time, 43 points below February, the best at 89.4%. 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 61 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 61.8%. 22 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 62% of the 15,000 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.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
62% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 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 15,158 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.72%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.3% 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.
At 468 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.6% on time across 590 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 589 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 CLT to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 589 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 71.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 572 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to MCO, every carrier
- Frontier on MCO to CLT, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on CLT to MCO70.5%
- American Airlines on CLT to MCO70.4%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.