The most you'd get from increasing the active frames for its clean hit would be 1. In Ultimate and in Smash 4, the clean hit was active for 2 frames. Smash 4 definitely needed that considering it was frame 4 on startup, but Ultimate you could argue for or against it having 3 active frames. The issue is that other Bairs have 2-3 active frames that are as fast or maybe slower than it, but Falco's has much higher knockback scaling than theirs letting it kill sooner and without needing to hit with certain hitboxes like Samus's Bair is good, but it has sweetspots and sourspots while Falco's you just need to time it by hitting with the first two frames. Another example: Fox and Falco share the same Bair startup again in Ultimate with the increased startup on Bair. It would not be farfetched to say that Fox would kill Falco for his Bair. The auto-cancel window wouldn't be as good, the angle would be different, 361 degrees instead of 30, and Fox would lose 1 active frame for landing a strong hit, but Falco's Bair is stronger than Fox's, has about the same range, and it has a late hit that Fox would probably be able to abuse considering his ground speed.
Lowered startup might not happen either. It's definitely not going back to frame 4 considering Ultimate's universal frame 3 jump. Frame 7 would be pushing it, but then I'd ask for buffs to other Bairs in general.
What might make Falco's Bair indirectly better would be to lower his hop height. This would let him use Bair lower than he does now by relying on a shorter hop height rather than pure startup. The problem with this is that unless they change his auto-cancel windows, Dair might lose its ability to be auto-canceled from a hop and auto-canceling Uair and Bair would be tighter. Dair's autocancel window is before frame 4 and after frame 29 where Falco's hop air time is 32 frames.
Falco's grounded Blaster has the same recovery as Wolf's at 34 frames. In the air, it has 32 recovery frames. So, what makes it not as potent of a projectile as Wolf's despite having faster startup as Falco's fires on frame 8 on the ground and 7 in the air while Wolf fires on frame 16? Besides hitbox size, Falco's lasers have very low set knockback. I don't know what it is in Ultimate, but in Smash 4, it was 2. In Brawl, it was 3, and in Melee, it was 5. Brawl Wolf's had 20 set knockback for the close and long ranged hits of the bolt and 24 for the mid ranged hit of the bolt. Ultimate increased the damage of the bolt, but its knockback values are still a mysterious. Basically, Wolf's bolts do more hitstun in addition to damage. Brawl Wolf frame data:
https://smashboards.com/threads/wolfs-frame-data-wip.319745/.
I could see them being okay with increasing the set knockback to around 5, but the issue with Falco's Blaster is that it can fire continuously unlike with other projectiles where you have to go through the entire animation again. Personally, I don't know why it can still do this since it's dumb when you think about it for someone to be able to sit there and fire projectiles like that in a fighting game. At least Fox's doesn't do hit stun, so he needs to be able to fire over and over or do a lot of damage with each hit, but Falco's is more or less a regular projectile. Basically, you'd see a lot more complaints about Falco's Blaster and there's already a lot of complaints about projectiles in general for fighting games.
Slightly lowered recovery could be fine. In his character trailer which was an older build of the game, it looked like ground Blaster had 32 recovery frames instead of 34. The laser's hitbox also had a 4 tag, so it might have done 4% instead of staying as 3%, the damage it always did since Melee:
https://smashboards.com/threads/ultimate-falco-gameplay-general-discussion.455401/#post-22178839.
The increased range is not going to happen. The developers seem keen on matching hitboxes with animations this time around and for the most part, making hitboxes more modest than in the previous games. Smash 4 Falco Dtilt was just absurd since a third of its range came from its disjoint and it was frame 7 on startup. The move itself is a natural disjoint because it uses Falco's tail, but in Smash 4, it literally had an invisible hitbox. You could make a pass for the Side Smashes of Captain Falcon and Ganondorf in Smash 4 because the weren't fast at frame 19, but not for Falco's Dtilt.
Falco's Dtilt was already a strong move since Melee where its fast startup, high damage, and strong knockback was contained by its shorter range than Fox's. Brawl screwed up Falco's Dtilt by not adjusting its knockback to fit Brawl, mainly gravity affecting vertical knockback now, so if it and other vertical kill moves were as strong as they were in Melee, they'd likely be too powerful. Smash 4 brought it closer to Melee, but made the tipper sourspot's hitbox reach so far and for whatever reason, did the opposite with Fox's Dtilt where its hitbox didn't even reach Fox's tail tip. That was the breaking point; removing a weakness to balance its strengths. It didn't need that kind of range and especially a fraudulent one. Removing the invisible range was all they needed to do for it to be fine in Ultimate, but nope, they increased the startup too. I can sort of see why since Falco's Dtilt, shorter range or not, is just better than Fox's, but they could have buffed Fox's and Wolf's for that matter with faster startup, lowered recovery, more damage, knockback, or whatever instead of touching Falco's to keep theirs on par with his.
Giving it back its frame 7 startup would mean so much for Falco since right now, the go-to launcher is Utilt which not only is twice as fast on startup, but actually combos into things because of its knockback. Dtilt can setup for followups, it does a lot of damage, and is good for poking and hitting shields because of its high damage and low recovery, but it's just not worth it for the average Falco player. At least not as it used to be for Falco players.
I doubt they're going to do animation changes. Other fighting games do it, but very rarely. Anyway, Up Smash's issue with hitting short characters or characters in a low profile could be fixed by giving it a hitbox below Falco's kicking leg and close to his body or increasing the size of the hitbox downward. That's the only issue with the new Up Smash that you could change since Smash 4 Up Smash was a different move in animation. In other words, hitting behind him and stuff like that would work without noticeable disjoints.
While they can't really increase the range, they could lower the recovery on it. Falco's Up Smash stands as one of the most protected Up Smashes because of its leg invincibility and how long it's active, but its range is very specific as it's focused on hitting above him. This is a very narrow point of view as I'm ignoring other characters, but compared to Fox's and Wolf's Up Smashes, its range is harsh. Fox's looks like it has further reach in Ultimate where part of it might be increased hitbox sizes by a little, moved hitboxes, or animation changes since his Up Smash does have a new animation in Ultimate. Wolf's has good horizontal range then good vertical range as it starts out as a breakdance kick to him shooting upwards from a handstand. It's kind of like a Down Smash first then an Up Smash. Wolf's Up Smash isn't the fastest at frame 13, but it has low recovery at 25 frames; its total frames is 47. Fox's has the highest at 45 frames of recovery of which its total frames is 56, but it hits the hardest. Falco's has 32 recovery frames which is still good, but considering its shorter overall range, it might be okay if it were lower like around 28 frames which is Brawl Falco's Up Smash recovery and Ultimate Mario's Up Smash recovery. The obvious problem with this is that Falco would be able to spam a frame 7, 12 active frames, 12 i-frames Up Smash.
Side Smash's biggest issue is that it's just another Side Smash compared to the defining Up Smash of Fox and Down Smash of Wolf. At this point, all of Wolf's Smashes are defining for him. Their strongest Smashes are not only very powerful, but fast. With Ultimate Wolf's Down Smash in terms of startup. frame 14, it's not fast, but in recovery it's fast at 22 frames. Falco's Side Smash is frame 17 on startup with a late hit on frame 20 which lasts 1 frame making and with its 48 total frames, gives it 29 recovery frames. The recovery is all right if not good for a Smash, but that's all it really has and i you're talking about Side Smashes with low recovery, Meta Knight and Wolf have Falco beat at 18 frames and 19 frames, respectively. Yes, Wolf's frame 20 Side Smash has 10 less recovery frames than Falco's. It can't be angled, but it's still strong and can mess with people trying to punish it. Meta Knight's is arguably better because he uses a sword and its charge frame is frame 21 instead of frame 7 even if it only has 1 active frame as is 4 frames slower on startup. In terms of kill power, it's strong, but not ridiculously strong like Ultimate Wolf's Down Smash, it can't be confirmed like Fox's Up Smash, and for having higher recovery, but using a sword instead, it's not as fast as the Marthlings', Pits', and Samuses' Side Smashes. There's a reason why people joked about Lucina being Side Smash the character when she and Marth have frame 10 Side Smashes. The Pits' and Samuses' Side Smashes are also frame 10 and Chrom and Roy's Side Smash are frame 13.
Making Falco's Side Smash faster is going to be tricky since they would have to reanimate it or use a frame speed multiplier as much as I would like for Falco to have a Side Smash with 20-ish recovery frames if it kept its startup or being frame 12 on startup like in Melee when it was Fox's Side Smash in animation. Power would be easier by having it do more damage or knockback.
So, thing with Falco Phantasm is that it's the largest horizontal spike in the game. It's broken on paper, so making it stronger is kind of hard to do without actually breaking it since in practice, hitting any kind of spike or move that's frame +18 is not easy to do without a setup or confirm. The other thing is that Fox's Fox Illusion gained what I feel was unnecessary startup, from 21 in the previous games to 25, since Ultimate removed the ability for Illusion and Phantasm to pass through shields. Falco's kept its frame 18 startup even though you can't really hit with it since the hitbox starts behind and on him, but it's really rough for Fox to recover in general because of the increased startup. I get it, Fox is supposed to be a glass cannon, but it seems a bit extreme. Anyway, I feel like the best they could do for Phantasm is to let it and other moves that can't anymore or couldn't before pass through shields.
As for hitboxes, it hits around 4/5s of its travel now instead of 1/2. There's a part at the end of Phantasm that doesn't hit in Ultimate, around when he stops, but it's not as bad as in Smash 4 where the last half of its travel had not hitbox.
They already lowered the recovery on Reflector in Ultimate. Smash 4 Reflector had 37 recovery frames and Brawl had 39 recovery frames which was the same as Melee Reflector, but you could jump cancel it on frame 4, so its normal recovery wasn't really experienced like with Blaster in Melee and Brawl. The issue with Falco's Reflector is everything about it. It's the fastest reflect at frame 1, it has good horizontal range, and it has transcendent priority as an attack. This is while being a frame 5 attack with 10 active frames and 33 recovery frames. Its high active frames are part of its recovery, but regardless, I don't think they want it to have even lower recovery. That said, I could see them shaving 3 frames off of it, but then again... It's complicated. Game balancing is very complicated.
This move is complete dog**** and I don't know why they have kept it like this since Brawl. Maybe Ultimate has better linking loop hits, but its inherent issues just make it a worse version of Fire Fox, Fire Wolf, and Ridley's Wing Blitz. Compared to Fire Fox, it has shorter travel distance, I think it still has slower travel speed, and I'm not sure, but at least in Smash 4 and Brawl, it locked Falco's air speed when freefalling to a much lower speed than Fox's. This is all while having the same launch frame of 43 or 44. As an attack, its loop hits send people out while Fox's sends people in. Being able to do up to 33% means nothing when it can't kill and it's inconsistent which it kind of needs to be since that would be dumb. Fox's Fire Fox can kill with the launch hit and the late hit at least has decent knockback unlike Falco's where you need to hit with the last hit, so if they fall out, they could stay closer to Falco unlike with Fox where they're going to be sent flying away.
Compared to Fire Wolf in Brawl, Fire Bird has a charging hitbox, but has the same travel distance and twice the startup to launch than Fire Wolf. In Ultimate, Fire Wolf lost some distance, but gained kill power with its increased knockback and its startup was decreased from 23 frames to 18. Fire Wolf's shorted travel distance means nothing for a character with one of the fastest air speeds and Fire Wolf having fast startup, same startup as Wolf Flash and Falco Phantasm, making it harder to react or get to Wolf if he's using either recovery move.
Compared to Ridley's Wing Blitz, Ridley's has less angles and no charging hitbox, but it hits harder and launches faster in general. Going up with Wing Blitz has a startup of frame 37, horizontally is frame 39, and down is frame 40.
Fire Bird needs to be either a recovery or an actual damage move than the mess it is now. Fast Fire Bird from Smash 4 would have been perfect for just recovering at the cost of actual distance as it gave Falco a bunch of momentum after it which they could just remove and it wouldn't really matter. That thing had about the same startup as Falco Phantasm from what I remember. They could even go as far and make it have no hitboxes like Flying Fox and having less travel distance than Fire Wolf and that would be fine. All that would matter is Falco can shoot towards a ledge faster. As an actual damage move, 64 Fire Fox/Melee Fire Bird. No charging hits, make the launch hit have ridiculously high knockback of some sort or do a ton of damage and there you go.
I'd take Little Mac's aerial Rising Uppercut and the inability to ledgesnap over Fire Bird on Falco. **** wouldn't have any vertical lift, but at least it'd be faster and Falco could use it from a confirm or something.