Carrier route record
F9IAH→MCO
Frontier Airlines · Houston to Orlando
- Flights
- 536
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on IAH 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 536 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,471 at 85.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on IAH to MCO runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 50 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 530 completed flights
Avg delay
110 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.6%
Every carrier on IAH to MCO, 3,669 flights
These figures cover 536 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 IAH to MCO
Frontier flew 536 of the 3,669 flights on IAH to MCO, about 15% of it. Its 72.6% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.1% to Frontier at 72.6%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 85.1% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 75.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 662 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,471 | 85.1% | 71 min | 0.65% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 662 | 75.5% | 84 min | 2.42% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 536 | 72.6% | 110 min | 0.93% | C+ |
United leads Spirit by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on IAH 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 30 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am10 flights—
- 8am–11am61 flights93.4%
- 11am–2pm108 flights75.0%
- 2pm–5pm57 flights70.2%
- 5pm–8pm100 flights74.7%
- 8pm–5am200 flights63.1%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.1% on time, against 93.4% for the 8am–11am 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 200 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on IAH to MCO through the year
July is the worst month at 52.6% on time, 30 points below February, the best at 82.5%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 63 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.6%. 11 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 55% of the 16,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
55% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 55 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 15,893 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 93.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
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 854 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 82.2% on time across 536 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 536 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 IAH to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 536 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 72.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 530 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to MCO, every carrier
- Frontier on MCO to IAH, the return leg
- United Airlines on IAH to MCO85.1%
- Spirit Airlines on IAH to MCO75.5%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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.