Carrier route record
F9MCO→CVG
Frontier Airlines · Orlando to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 819
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 46%
- 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 CVG sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 819 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on MCO to CVG from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 805 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.9%
Every carrier on MCO to CVG, 1,781 flights
These figures cover 819 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 CVG
Frontier flew 819 of the 1,781 flights on MCO to CVG, about 46% of it. Its 75.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 75.7% to Republic at 61.5%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 819 | 75.7% | 77 min | 1.47% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 722 | 72.5% | 86 min | 1.25% | C |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 226 | 72.5% | 61 min | 1.33% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 14 | 61.5% | 45 min | 7.14% | D− |
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am38 flights89.2%
- 8am–11am193 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm127 flights86.6%
- 2pm–5pm137 flights63.0%
- 5pm–8pm89 flights72.4%
- 8pm–5am235 flights69.3%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.2% of the time, against 63.0% for the afternoon window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 235 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on MCO to CVG through the year
July is the worst month at 45.8% on time, 43 points below September, the best at 88.5%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.0%. 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 59% of the 15,000 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
59% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 15,026 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 89.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.47% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.24%.
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. 10.2% 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 757 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 81.0% on time across 821 flights, 5 points above 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 819 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 CVG
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 819 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 75.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 805 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to CVG, every carrier
- Frontier on CVG to MCO, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MCO to CVG72.5%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to CVG72.5%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) 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.