Carrier route record
F9MCO→DEN
Frontier Airlines · Orlando to Denver
- Flights
- 848
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- 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 DEN lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 848 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,758 at 85.0% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's MCO to DEN record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 54 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 839 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.0%
Every carrier on MCO to DEN, 4,579 flights
These figures cover 848 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 DEN
Frontier flew 848 of the 4,579 flights on MCO to DEN, about 19% of it. Its 83.0% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.0% to Southwest at 71.9%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 85.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 71.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,973 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,758 | 85.0% | 87 min | 0.63% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 848 | 83.0% | 62 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,973 | 71.9% | 56 min | 0.41% | C+ |
The spread between United and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on MCO to DEN
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 19 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am274 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am32 flights93.8%
- 11am–2pm72 flights88.7%
- 2pm–5pm143 flights78.7%
- 5pm–8pm11 flights—
- 8pm–5am316 flights75.3%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.8% of the time, against 75.3% for the overnight window. That is 19 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 316 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on MCO to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 71.4% on time, 22 points below May, the best at 93.4%. 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 98 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.5%. 8 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 48% of the 8,925 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
48% 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 8,925 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 8,925 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 93.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.3% 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 1,547 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.7% on time across 850 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 848 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 DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 848 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 83.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 839 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to DEN, every carrier
- Frontier on DEN to MCO, the return leg
- United Airlines on MCO to DEN85.0%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to DEN71.9%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.