Carrier route record
F9MCO→PHX
Frontier Airlines · Orlando to Phoenix
- Flights
- 207
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on MCO to PHX lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That rests on 207 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 841 at 78.9% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's MCO to PHX record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 205 completed flights
Avg delay
44 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.97%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.9%
Every carrier on MCO to PHX, 1,844 flights
These figures cover 207 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 14 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on MCO to PHX
Frontier flew 207 of the 1,844 flights on MCO to PHX, about 11% of it. Its 82.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 82.9% to American at 78.0%.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 207 | 82.9% | 44 min | 0.97% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 841 | 78.9% | 54 min | 0.36% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 796 | 78.0% | 103 min | 0.63% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 78.9%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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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 207 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am89 flights86.5%
- 11am–2pm21 flights—
- 2pm–5pm11 flights—
- 5pm–8pm13 flights—
- 8pm–5am73 flights78.9%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 86.5% on time for the 8am–11am window against 78.9% for 8pm–5am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 89 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on MCO to PHX through the year
- Oct–Dec 202547 flights80.9%
- Jan–Mar 202654 flights80.8%
- Apr–Jun 202658 flights86.2%
- Jul–Sep 202648 flights83.3%
Scale runs 70% to 90%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 82.9% on time across 207 flights.
Quarter by quarter Frontier on MCO to PHX held fairly steady: 80.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 80.8% in Jan–Mar 2026, 86.2% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 83.3% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 93.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.4%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Frontier on MCO to PHX runs when it is late
Frontier on MCO to PHX often beats the schedule: 100 of 205 completed flights, 49%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 35 late arrivals split 15 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 8 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early100 flights48.8%
- Within 15 min70 flights34.1%
- 15–29 min late15 flights7.3%
- 30–59 min late12 flights5.9%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights2.9%
- 2+ hours late2 flights1.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 205 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 59 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 29 still arrived on time. 5 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Frontier on MCO to PHX
The latest arrival of the period was on 5 January 2026, 2 hours 27 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across January, December, November, July and October, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 5 January 2026 | 2 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 December 2025 | 2 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 November 2025 | 1 hour 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 July 2026 | 1 hour 13 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 13 October 2025 | 1 hour 12 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 1,530 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,530 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 to one. The split is drawn from 1,530 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 654 of the 1,530 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.97% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 1,849 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 74.6% on time across 208 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. 207 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 PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 207 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 82.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 205 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to PHX, every carrier
- Frontier on PHX to MCO, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to PHX78.9%
- American Airlines on MCO to PHX78.0%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.