Carrier route record

F9MCO→ATL

Frontier Airlines · Orlando to Atlanta

Flights: 1,266
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 15%
Carriers: 4

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

Frontier on MCO to ATL draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,266 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 5,531 at 78.3% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.3% on time across 5,531 flights.

On time

67.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,234 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.21%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

74.9%

Every carrier on MCO to ATL, 8,259 flights

These figures cover 1,266 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on MCO to ATL

Frontier flew 1,266 of the 8,259 flights on MCO to ATL, about 15% of it. Its 67.2% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.3% to Spirit at 65.1%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 78.3% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 65.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 369 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	5,531	78.3%	88 min	1.39%	B
Southwest Airlines	1,093	69.9%	64 min	1.56%	C
Frontier Airlines (this page)	1,266	67.2%	76 min	2.21%	C
Spirit Airlines	369	65.1%	65 min	3.79%	C−

Spirit Airlines cancels 3.8% 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.

Flight by flight

Frontier flight numbers on MCO to ATL

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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 33 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am267 flights87.3%
8am–11am245 flights65.6%
11am–2pm165 flights71.3%
2pm–5pm158 flights54.7%
5pm–8pm307 flights55.9%
8pm–5am124 flights64.8%

Scale runs 45% to 95%.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.3% of the time, against 54.7% for the afternoon window. That is 33 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 307 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on MCO to ATL through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, June worst

June is the worst month at 52.7% on time, 30 points below September, the best at 82.6%. 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 123 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.8%, a spread of 23 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

Frontier on MCO to ATL often beats the schedule: 371 of 1,234 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 405 late arrivals split 115 under half an hour, 139 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 151 an hour or more.

15+ min early371 flights30.1%
Within 15 min458 flights37.1%
15–29 min late115 flights9.3%
30–59 min late139 flights11.3%
1–2 hours late80 flights6.5%
2+ hours late71 flights5.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 1,234 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

43 of 291 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 157 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ATL.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on MCO to ATL

The latest arrival of the period was on 17 August 2026, 13 hours 19 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across August, June, October, February and November, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on MCO to ATL in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
17 August 2026	13 hours 19 minutes	Carrier
25 June 2026	11 hours 32 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
27 October 2025	8 hours 4 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
24 February 2026	7 hours 29 minutes	Carrier
11 November 2025	7 hours 14 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 31,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
39%
National Airspace System
36%
Carrier
21%
Extreme weather
4%

39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 30,933 reported delay minutes.

36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 11,000 minutes out of 31,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 2.21% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

12.2% 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.

At 404 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 64.8% on time across 1,270 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 1,266 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking Frontier on MCO to ATL

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 82.6% on time and June 52.7%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,234 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