Route reliability record
ALB→MCO
Albany to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,054
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,073 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,054 ALB to MCO flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 631 at 79.3% on time.
Best time to fly ALB to MCO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.3%, against 78.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,039 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.95%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
79.3% on time across 631 flights
These figures cover 1,054 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ALB to MCO
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 631 | 79.3% | 53 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 423 | 76.6% | 55 min | 1.18% | B |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 79.3%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Albany to Orlando
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ALB → MCOAlbany to Orlando | Southwest Airlines | 78.7% | 79.3% | 0.79% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 2. ALB → MCOAlbany to Orlando | JetBlue Airways | 75.7% | 76.6% | 1.18% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 31 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am475 flights89.4%
- 8am–11am182 flights84.5%
- 11am–2pm93 flights69.9%
- 2pm–5pm96 flights58.1%
- 5pm–8pm205 flights60.3%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.4% of the time, against 58.1% for the afternoon window. That is 31 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 475 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
August is the worst month at 63.3% on time, 26 points below June, the best at 89.4%. 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. February was the busiest month here, with 112 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.7%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
36% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 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 12,180 reported delay minutes.
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 4,979 minutes out of 12,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 0.95% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.47%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,073 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 71.4% on time across 1,056 flights, 7 points below 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,054 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MCO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,054 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 78.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,039 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ALB to MCO questions
How often is ALB to 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 21.8% of the 1,054 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ALB to MCO?
Southwest Airlines leads at 79.3% on time across 631 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 76.6%, a gap of 3 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 ALB to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 58.1%, 31 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 ALB to MCO?
August is the weakest month at 63.3% on time, compared with 89.4% in June. Across the year that is 26 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
- MCO to ALB — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on ALB to MCO79.3%
- JetBlue Airways on ALB to MCO76.6%
- ALB to ORD, a related route76.6%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- ALB to BWI, a related route88.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.3%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record76.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. ALB to MCO and MCO to ALB are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.