Carrier performance at one airport
UA→MCO
United Airlines at Orlando International
- Departures
- 15,054
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Routes
- 8
- Rank here
- #1 of 10
United Airlines at Orlando lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 15,054 flights, of which United Airlines flew 15,054 at 81.5% on time.
Measured against the airport rather than the country, United Airlines runs 7 points ahead of the 74.6% weighted average across all carriers at MCO. That is the comparison worth making: every operator here works the same runways, the same airspace and the same weather.
Key figures
On time
81.5%
14,829 completed departures
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed flights only
Cancelled
1.11%
At MCO, this carrier only
Rank here
#1
Of 10 carriers clearing the floor at MCO
These figures cover 15,000 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Against the competition
Every carrier at MCO, ranked
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 81.5% of the time; Allegiant Air manages 67.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 407 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 15,054 | 81.5% | 83 min | 1.11% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 21,571 | 77.9% | 83 min | 1.94% | B |
| Alaska Airlines | 2,396 | 77.7% | 58 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 19,073 | 76.3% | 79 min | 1.68% | B |
| Republic Airways | 404 | 75.8% | 60 min | 0.50% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 19,654 | 74.4% | 90 min | 1.97% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 51,275 | 72.6% | 57 min | 1.12% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 18,799 | 71.3% | 77 min | 2.72% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 11,307 | 70.1% | 67 min | 4.34% | C− |
| Allegiant Air | 407 | 67.8% | 93 min | 1.72% | C |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.3% 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.
Route by route
Where United Airlines flies from MCO
United Airlines operates 8 routes out of MCO with enough volume to report. Route records inside one carrier at one airport still spread widely, because a short shuttle and a transcontinental have very different exposure to a late inbound.
| Route | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCO to EWR · Newark | 4,019 | 78.6% | 95 min | 2.36% | B |
| MCO to ORD · Chicago | 2,537 | 74.3% | 82 min | 0.95% | C+ |
| MCO to IAH · Houston | 2,444 | 85.4% | 79 min | 0.57% | A+ |
| MCO to IAD · Washington | 1,874 | 82.3% | 79 min | 0.96% | B+ |
| MCO to DEN · Denver | 1,709 | 87.0% | 80 min | 0.53% | A+ |
| MCO to SFO · San Francisco | 1,100 | 81.6% | 64 min | 0.27% | B+ |
| MCO to LAX · Los Angeles | 828 | 89.2% | 57 min | 0.12% | A+ |
| MCO to CLE · Cleveland | 543 | 85.2% | 84 min | 0.55% | A+ |
Flight by flight
United Airlines flight numbers from MCO
8 United Airlines flight numbers leaving MCO flew their main route often enough to have a record of their own. Grouped by destination.
Departure window
Best time of day for this operation
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,744 flights92.7%
- 8am–11am3,765 flights89.6%
- 11am–2pm3,112 flights87.1%
- 2pm–5pm3,065 flights72.0%
- 5pm–8pm3,029 flights68.8%
- 8pm–5am339 flights78.1%
Scale runs 60% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.7% of the time, against 68.8% for the evening 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 3,765 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Seasonal pattern
August is the worst month at 72.4% on time, 15 points below April, the best at 87.6%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 1,497 flights.
Delay causes
What holds this operation up
- 41%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 94,000 minutes out of 227,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 227,480 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.39%.
7.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
15,054 flights sit behind these numbers, which is a large enough sample that the headline rate is not moving on noise. Where a sub-group falls below 30 flights the site shows a dash instead of a percentage.
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 87.6% on time and August 72.4%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 14,829 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
United Airlines at MCO
How often is United Airlines at MCO delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.5% of the 15,054 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on United Airlines at MCO?
United Airlines leads at 81.5% on time across 15,054 flights. Allegiant Air is at the other end on 67.8%, a gap of 14 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on United Airlines at MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 68.8%, 24 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are August delays on United Airlines at MCO?
August is the weakest month at 72.4% on time, compared with 87.6% in April. Across the year that is 15 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.