Carrier route record
F9PHL→MCO
Frontier Airlines · Philadelphia to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,529
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on PHL to MCO sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 1,529 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 2,581 at 73.6% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 73.6% on time across 2,581 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,492 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.16%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.4%
Every carrier on PHL to MCO, 5,334 flights
These figures cover 1,529 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% 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 PHL to MCO
Frontier flew 1,529 of the 5,334 flights on PHL to MCO, about 29% of it. Its 70.2% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 73.6% to Frontier at 70.2%.
The three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 2,581 | 73.6% | 77 min | 1.98% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 583 | 73.0% | 67 min | 5.83% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 641 | 72.3% | 59 min | 0.94% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 1,529 | 70.2% | 107 min | 2.16% | C |
Spirit Airlines cancels 5.8% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Frontier flight numbers on PHL to MCO
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 22 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am208 flights81.0%
- 8am–11am387 flights80.3%
- 11am–2pm225 flights67.1%
- 2pm–5pm207 flights62.3%
- 5pm–8pm247 flights59.1%
- 8pm–5am255 flights66.1%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.1% on time, against 81.0% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 387 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on PHL to MCO through the year
July is the worst month at 57.6% on time, 30 points below September, the best at 87.4%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 149 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.6%. 26 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 48,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
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 48,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 47,566 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 81.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.16% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.
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. 15.0% 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 862 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 runs 71.4% on time across 1,528 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,529 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 PHL to MCO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 87.4% on time and July 57.6%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,492 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to MCO, every carrier
- Frontier on MCO to PHL, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHL to MCO73.6%
- Spirit Airlines on PHL to MCO73.0%
- Southwest Airlines on PHL to MCO72.3%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.