Carrier route record

F9STL→MCO

Frontier Airlines · St. Louis to Orlando

Flights: 395
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 16%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.

Frontier on STL 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 395 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Frontier on STL to MCO runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 50 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 383 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.78%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.0%

Every carrier on STL to MCO, 2,497 flights

These figures cover 395 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 STL to MCO

Frontier flew 395 of the 2,497 flights on STL to MCO, about 16% of it. Its 72.6% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 90.0% to Frontier at 72.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on STL to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	10	90.0%	25 min	0.00%	A+
Southwest Airlines	2,092	79.0%	59 min	0.62%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)	395	72.6%	77 min	2.78%	C

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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am10 flights—
8am–11am47 flights86.7%
11am–2pm15 flights—
2pm–5pm165 flights71.0%
5pm–8pm149 flights69.2%
8pm–5am9 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.7% of the time, against 69.2% for the evening window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 165 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on STL to MCO through the year

Jul–Sep 202570 flights71.6%
Oct–Dec 202594 flights70.0%
Jan–Mar 2026138 flights67.2%
Apr–Jun 202693 flights83.7%

Scale runs 60% 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 72.6% on time across 395 flights.

Frontier on STL to MCO did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 83.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 67.2%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 99 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 66.1%. 11 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 67% of the 8,064 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
67%
National Airspace System
15%
Carrier
15%
Extreme weather
3%

67% 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 8,064 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 8,064 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 86.7% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.78%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

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. 10.2% 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 882 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 72.9% on time across 394 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 395 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 STL to MCO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 395 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 72.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 383 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