Carrier route record

F9MCO→MSY

Frontier Airlines · Orlando to New Orleans

Flights: 168
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
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 MSY 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 168 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,593 at 73.8% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's MCO to MSY 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.

On time

83.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 165 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.19%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.3%

Every carrier on MCO to MSY, 2,278 flights

These figures cover 168 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% 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 MSY

Frontier flew 168 of the 2,278 flights on MCO to MSY, about 7% of it. Its 83.0% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 83.0% to Spirit at 73.0%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 MSY
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	168	83.0%	78 min	1.19%	B
Southwest Airlines	1,593	73.8%	58 min	0.38%	C+
Spirit Airlines	517	73.0%	67 min	2.71%	C

No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 73.8%, about a point 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 168 flights.

5am–8am19 flights—
8am–11am37 flights86.5%
11am–2pm29 flights—
2pm–5pm59 flights89.7%
5pm–8pm24 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 89.7% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.

Across the year

Frontier on MCO to MSY through the year

Jul–Sep 202521 flights—
Oct–Dec 202530 flights90.0%
Jan–Mar 202652 flights80.0%
Apr–Jun 202665 flights89.1%

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 83.0% on time across 168 flights.

Frontier on MCO to MSY did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 80.0%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 56 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, Monday is the strongest day at 92.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.5%. 30 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 52% of the 2,182 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
52%
Carrier
21%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
13%

Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,182 reported delay minutes.

52% 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 2,182 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.

Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.60%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.5% 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 551 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 74.5% on time across 168 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. 168 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 MSY

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 168 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. 165 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