Carrier route record
F9RDU→MCO
Frontier Airlines · Raleigh to Orlando
- Flights
- 724
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on RDU to MCO sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 724 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,005 at 81.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on RDU to MCO runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 46 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 711 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.3%
Every carrier on RDU to MCO, 2,702 flights
These figures cover 724 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% 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 RDU to MCO
Frontier flew 724 of the 2,702 flights on RDU to MCO, about 27% of it. Its 73.0% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 81.9% to Frontier at 73.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,005 | 81.9% | 80 min | 2.39% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 129 | 81.2% | 38 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 844 | 78.2% | 62 min | 1.54% | B |
| Frontier Airlines (this page) | 724 | 73.0% | 93 min | 1.80% | C |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 81.9%, 4 points 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am51 flights90.0%
- 8am–11am76 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm137 flights73.9%
- 2pm–5pm146 flights68.3%
- 5pm–8pm92 flights79.3%
- 8pm–5am222 flights66.5%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 66.5% for the overnight window. That is 24 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 222 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on RDU to MCO through the year
December is the weak month at 49.0% on time, against 86.3% in October. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. April was the busiest month here, with 79 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 80.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.6%. 21 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 62% of the 18,000 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.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
62% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 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 17,804 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 90.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.80% 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. 12.5% 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 534 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 78.4% on time across 724 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 724 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 RDU to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 724 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 73.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 711 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to MCO, every carrier
- Frontier on MCO to RDU, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on RDU to MCO81.9%
- Republic Airways on RDU to MCO81.2%
- Southwest Airlines on RDU to MCO78.2%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.