Carrier route record

F9MCO→BUF

Frontier Airlines · Orlando to Buffalo

Flights: 302
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 17%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on MCO to BUF 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 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 302 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 560 at 65.6% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Frontier on MCO to BUF runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 58 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 298 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.99%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

66.4%

Every carrier on MCO to BUF, 1,811 flights

These figures cover 302 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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 BUF

Frontier flew 302 of the 1,811 flights on MCO to BUF, about 17% of it. Its 71.5% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 71.5% to Southwest at 65.3%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to BUF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	302	71.5%	66 min	0.99%	C+
JetBlue Airways	560	65.6%	75 min	2.68%	C
Southwest Airlines	949	65.3%	52 min	1.05%	C

No carrier stands out. JetBlue tops the table at 65.6%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am26 flights—
8am–11am50 flights74.0%
11am–2pm31 flights74.2%
2pm–5pm148 flights73.3%
5pm–8pm47 flights51.1%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.1% on time, against 74.2% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 148 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on MCO to BUF through the year

Jul–Sep 202520 flights—
Oct–Dec 202561 flights63.3%
Jan–Mar 202677 flights80.0%
Apr–Jun 202682 flights75.6%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights59.0%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. 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 71.5% on time across 302 flights.

Frontier on MCO to BUF did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 80.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 59.0%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 76 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 63.5%, a spread of 12 points.

Arrival by arrival

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

Frontier on MCO to BUF often beats the schedule: 93 of 298 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 85 late arrivals split 29 under half an hour, 21 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 35 an hour or more.

15+ min early93 flights31.2%
Within 15 min120 flights40.3%
15–29 min late29 flights9.7%
30–59 min late21 flights7.0%
1–2 hours late22 flights7.4%
2+ hours late13 flights4.4%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 298 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 72 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 8 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 21 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 BUF.

The worst days

Worst days for Frontier on MCO to BUF

The latest arrival of the period was on 12 February 2026, 7 hours 48 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Frontier on MCO to BUF in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
12 February 2026	7 hours 48 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
14 July 2026	3 hours 17 minutes	Extreme weather
29 August 2026	2 hours 59 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
22 September 2025	2 hours 38 minutes	Carrier
4 January 2026	2 hours 37 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 5,623 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
24%
National Airspace System
21%
Extreme weather
9%

47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,623 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 5,623 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 0.99% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

11.7% 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.

The 1,011 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.

The return leg runs 71.3% on time across 303 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. 302 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 BUF

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 302 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 71.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 298 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