Carrier route record

F9MCO→IAH

Frontier Airlines · Orlando to Houston

Flights: 536
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 15%
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 IAH 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 536 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,472 at 84.1% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's MCO to IAH record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 533 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.37%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.0%

Every carrier on MCO to IAH, 3,670 flights

These figures cover 536 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 17 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 IAH

Frontier flew 536 of the 3,670 flights on MCO to IAH, about 15% of it. Its 82.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.1% to Spirit at 74.3%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 84.1% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 74.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 662 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to IAH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	2,472	84.1%	89 min	0.65%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)	536	82.2%	74 min	0.37%	B+
Spirit Airlines	662	74.3%	71 min	2.57%	C

United leads Spirit by 10 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 20 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am175 flights90.8%
8am–11am98 flights80.6%
11am–2pm52 flights90.4%
2pm–5pm138 flights71.3%
5pm–8pm63 flights77.8%
8pm–5am10 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.8% of the time, against 71.3% for the afternoon window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 175 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on MCO to IAH through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, August worst

August is the worst month at 70.3% on time, 25 points below February, the best at 95.1%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 63 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 77.9%. 10 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 7,066 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
35%
Carrier
19%
Extreme weather
6%

35% 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 7,066 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 7,066 reported delay minutes.

39% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 2,766 minutes out of 7,066, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.37%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.6% 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 854 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 536 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 536 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 IAH

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 536 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 82.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 533 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