Carrier route record

F9MCO→IND

Frontier Airlines · Orlando to Indianapolis

Flights: 335
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 14%
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 IND 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 335 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 424 at 75.3% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's MCO to IND record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 45 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 330 completed flights

Avg delay

101 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.19%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.2%

Every carrier on MCO to IND, 2,404 flights

These figures cover 335 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 IND

Frontier flew 335 of the 2,404 flights on MCO to IND, about 14% of it. Its 82.1% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 82.1% to Republic at 55.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to IND
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	335	82.1%	101 min	1.19%	B
Spirit Airlines	424	75.3%	72 min	2.36%	B
Southwest Airlines	1,617	72.6%	58 min	1.36%	C
Republic Airwaysthin sample	28	55.6%	61 min	0.00%	D+

No carrier stands out. Spirit tops the table at 75.3%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 23 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am76 flights93.4%
8am–11am63 flights92.1%
11am–2pm18 flights—
2pm–5pm138 flights75.9%
5pm–8pm40 flights70.0%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.4% of the time, against 70.0% for the evening window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 138 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on MCO to IND through the year

Jul–Sep 202560 flights74.1%
Oct–Dec 202568 flights80.9%
Jan–Mar 202697 flights80.2%
Apr–Jun 2026110 flights88.9%

Scale runs 65% 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 82.1% on time across 335 flights.

Frontier on MCO to IND did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 88.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 74.1%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 84 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 89.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.9%. 16 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 43% of the 5,971 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
43%
Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
7%

43% 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 5,971 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 5,971 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 2,178 of the 5,971 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.2% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 829 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 73.2% on time across 336 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 335 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 IND

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 335 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 82.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 330 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