Carrier route record
F9CVG→MCO
Frontier Airlines · Cincinnati to Orlando
- Flights
- 821
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 46%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on CVG to MCO lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 821 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on CVG to MCO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 811 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.22%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.9%
Every carrier on CVG to MCO, 1,783 flights
These figures cover 821 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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 CVG to MCO
Frontier flew 821 of the 1,783 flights on CVG to MCO, about 46% of it. Its 81.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 81.0% to Southwest at 78.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 821 | 81.0% | 91 min | 1.22% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 722 | 79.3% | 61 min | 1.11% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 14 | 78.6% | 42 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 226 | 78.0% | 52 min | 0.88% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on CVG to MCO
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 16 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–8am250 flights84.6%
- 8am–11am156 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm122 flights71.1%
- 2pm–5pm73 flights86.3%
- 5pm–8pm140 flights77.5%
- 8pm–5am80 flights74.7%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 71.1% on time against 86.9% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 250 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on CVG to MCO through the year
December is the weak month at 62.3% on time, against 94.1% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.0%. 16 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 57% 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
57% 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 7 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 13,976 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.22% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.6% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 757 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 75.7% on time across 819 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 821 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 CVG to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 821 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 81.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 811 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to MCO, every carrier
- Frontier on MCO to CVG, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on CVG to MCO79.3%
- Southwest Airlines on CVG to MCO78.0%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) 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.