Carrier route record
F9MCO→BDL
Frontier Airlines · Orlando to Hartford
- Flights
- 223
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on MCO to BDL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 223 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 1,011 at 73.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on MCO to BDL runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 80 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 217 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.7%
Every carrier on MCO to BDL, 1,890 flights
These figures cover 223 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.6% 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 MCO to BDL
Frontier flew 223 of the 1,890 flights on MCO to BDL, about 12% of it. Its 69.6% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 88.9% to Frontier at 69.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 9 | 88.9% | 48 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,011 | 73.6% | 74 min | 1.98% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 647 | 72.3% | 53 min | 1.70% | C |
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 223 | 69.6% | 101 min | 2.24% | C |
No carrier stands out. JetBlue tops the table at 73.6%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am27 flights—
- 8am–11am41 flights85.4%
- 11am–2pm5 flights—
- 2pm–5pm88 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm62 flights55.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.7% on time, against 85.4% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 88 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on MCO to BDL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202549 flights63.3%
- Oct–Dec 202539 flights84.2%
- Jan–Mar 202672 flights64.7%
- Apr–Jun 202663 flights71.0%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. 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 69.6% on time across 223 flights.
Frontier on MCO to BDL did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 84.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 63.3%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 56 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, Friday is the strongest day at 76.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 61.0%. 15 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 46% of the 6,670 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
46% 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 6,670 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 6,670 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 85.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.45%.
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. 16.6% 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 1,050 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 runs 69.3% on time across 223 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. 223 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 MCO to BDL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 223 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 69.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 217 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to BDL, every carrier
- Frontier on BDL to MCO, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to BDL73.6%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to BDL72.3%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- 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.