Carrier route record

F9MCO→CLT

Frontier Airlines · Orlando to Charlotte

Flights: 590
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on MCO to CLT 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 590 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 3,679 at 78.8% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on MCO to CLT from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 582 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.19%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.4%

Every carrier on MCO to CLT, 4,739 flights

These figures cover 590 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Frontier against every carrier on MCO to CLT

Frontier flew 590 of the 4,739 flights on MCO to CLT, about 12% of it. Its 80.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 80.6% to Spirit at 72.3%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 78.8% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 72.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 470 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines (this page)	590	80.6%	66 min	1.19%	B
American Airlines	3,679	78.8%	88 min	1.60%	B
Spirit Airlines	470	72.3%	72 min	4.47%	C−

Spirit Airlines cancels 4.5% 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 CLT

F9 144606:0090.6% · 259 flights

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 39 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am135 flights93.2%
8am–11am129 flights86.7%
11am–2pm107 flights78.1%
2pm–5pm151 flights77.7%
5pm–8pm55 flights54.5%
8pm–5am13 flights—

Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.5% on time, against 93.2% for the 5am–8am 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 151 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on MCO to CLT through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, December worst

December is the weak month at 74.1% on time, against 92.7% in May. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 87.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.0%. 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 46% of the 7,400 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
46%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
18%
Extreme weather
4%

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 7,400 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 7,400 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.2% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.4% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 468 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.9% on time across 589 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 590 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 CLT

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 590 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 80.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 582 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures