Carrier route record
F9MCO→DTW
Frontier Airlines · Orlando to Detroit
- Flights
- 428
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- 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 DTW 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 428 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,170 at 74.2% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's MCO to DTW record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 423 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.3%
Every carrier on MCO to DTW, 3,676 flights
These figures cover 428 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 DTW
Frontier flew 428 of the 3,676 flights on MCO to DTW, about 12% of it. Its 82.7% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 82.7% to Southwest at 55.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 428 | 82.7% | 56 min | 0.93% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,170 | 74.2% | 77 min | 0.97% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 950 | 69.4% | 66 min | 1.79% | C |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 55.1% | 53 min | 0.78% | D+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 74.2%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on MCO to DTW
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 34 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am165 flights90.7%
- 8am–11am92 flights92.4%
- 11am–2pm44 flights79.1%
- 2pm–5pm86 flights70.6%
- 5pm–8pm41 flights58.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.5% on time, against 92.4% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 165 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on MCO to DTW through the year
- Jul–Sep 202576 flights89.3%
- Oct–Dec 202579 flights76.9%
- Jan–Mar 2026156 flights77.8%
- Apr–Jun 2026117 flights88.9%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 82.7% on time across 428 flights.
Frontier on MCO to DTW did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 89.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.9%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 107 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.6%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 4,078 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,429 of the 4,078 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,078 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 92.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.2% 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.
The 957 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 76.1% on time across 427 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 428 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 DTW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 428 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 82.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 423 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to DTW, every carrier
- Frontier on DTW to MCO, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MCO to DTW74.2%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to DTW69.4%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to DTW55.1%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
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.