Carrier route record

F9MCO→SJU

Frontier Airlines · Orlando to San Juan

Flights: 1,242
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 21%
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 SJU sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,242 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, JetBlue Airways, flew 2,134 at 76.4% on time.

JetBlue Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.4% on time across 2,134 flights.

On time

73.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,224 completed flights

Avg delay

80 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.37%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.0%

Every carrier on MCO to SJU, 6,054 flights

These figures cover 1,242 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 SJU

Frontier flew 1,242 of the 6,054 flights on MCO to SJU, about 21% of it. Its 73.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 73.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 76.4% to Southwest at 69.8%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. JetBlue Airways arrives on time 76.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 69.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,067 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to SJU
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
JetBlue Airways	2,134	76.4%	70 min	0.98%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)	1,242	73.6%	80 min	1.37%	C
Spirit Airlines	611	70.9%	60 min	0.98%	C+
Southwest Airlines	2,067	69.8%	51 min	0.63%	C+

JetBlue leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Flight by flight

Frontier flight numbers on MCO to SJU

F9 472623:4073.7% · 342 flights

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 25 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am250 flights89.9%
8am–11am144 flights81.7%
11am–2pm121 flights67.8%
2pm–5pm114 flights68.4%
5pm–8pm76 flights65.3%
8pm–5am537 flights67.4%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.9% of the time, against 65.3% for the evening window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 537 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on MCO to SJU through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, July worst

July is the worst month at 58.4% on time, 36 points below October, the best at 94.7%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 133 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.6%. 9 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 49% of the 26,000 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
49%
Carrier
37%
National Airspace System
10%
Extreme weather
4%

49% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 25,730 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 9,556 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 1,188 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 78.9% on time across 1,240 flights, 5 points above 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,242 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking Frontier on MCO to SJU

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 94.7% on time and July 58.4%, a swing of 36 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,224 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