Carrier route record
F9MCO→CMH
Frontier Airlines · Orlando to Columbus
- Flights
- 229
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- 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 CMH lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 229 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,527 at 73.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on MCO to CMH from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 225 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.75%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.6%
Every carrier on MCO to CMH, 2,171 flights
These figures cover 229 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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 CMH
Frontier flew 229 of the 2,171 flights on MCO to CMH, about 11% of it. Its 78.2% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 78.2% to Republic at 53.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 73.4% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 61.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 387 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 229 | 78.2% | 71 min | 1.75% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,527 | 73.4% | 58 min | 1.18% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 387 | 61.8% | 63 min | 2.58% | D |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 28 | 53.6% | 68 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Southwest leads Spirit by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 37 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am49 flights85.4%
- 8am–11am55 flights92.7%
- 11am–2pm35 flights73.5%
- 2pm–5pm36 flights83.3%
- 5pm–8pm54 flights55.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.8% on time, against 92.7% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 55 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on MCO to CMH through the year
- Jul–Sep 202546 flights82.2%
- Oct–Dec 202542 flights85.4%
- Jan–Mar 202668 flights79.1%
- Apr–Jun 202673 flights70.8%
Scale runs 60% 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 78.2% on time across 229 flights.
Frontier on MCO to CMH did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 85.4% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 70.8%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 57 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.2%. 12 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 52% of the 3,493 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
52% 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 3,493 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 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 3,493 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 92.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.75% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.4% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 802 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 72.6% on time across 229 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 229 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 CMH
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 229 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 78.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 225 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to CMH, every carrier
- Frontier on CMH to MCO, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to CMH73.4%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to CMH61.8%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.