Carrier route record
F9MDW→MCO
Frontier Airlines · Chicago to Orlando
- Flights
- 233
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on MDW to MCO lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 233 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Frontier on MDW to MCO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 229 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.9%
Every carrier on MDW to MCO, 2,774 flights
These figures cover 233 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 MDW to MCO
Frontier flew 233 of the 2,774 flights on MDW to MCO, about 8% of it. Its 80.3% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 80.3% to Southwest at 75.5%.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample | 233 | 80.3% | 88 min | 1.72% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,541 | 75.5% | 57 min | 1.46% | B |
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 233 flights.
- 5am–8am31 flights77.4%
- 8am–11am75 flights86.3%
- 11am–2pm36 flights83.3%
- 2pm–5pm41 flights80.0%
- 5pm–8pm26 flights—
- 8pm–5am24 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.3% of the time, against 77.4% for the early window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 75 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on MDW to MCO through the year
- Jul–Sep 202557 flights85.7%
- Oct–Dec 202567 flights80.3%
- Jan–Mar 202680 flights73.1%
- Apr–Jun 202629 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. 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 80.3% on time across 233 flights.
Frontier on MDW to MCO did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 85.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 73.1%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 78 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 70.6%. 19 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 3,967 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
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 1,470 of the 3,967 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,967 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.72% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 9.6% 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 990 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 75.5% on time across 232 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 233 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 MDW to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 233 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 80.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 229 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MDW to MCO, every carrier
- Frontier on MCO to MDW, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on MDW to MCO75.5%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago Midway International (MDW) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.