Carrier route record
WNALB→MCO
Southwest Airlines · Albany to Orlando
- Flights
- 626
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 61%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on ALB to MCO lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 626 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Southwest on ALB to MCO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 619 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.80%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.1%
Every carrier on ALB to MCO, 1,021 flights
These figures cover 626 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on ALB to MCO
Southwest flew 626 of the 1,021 flights on ALB to MCO, most of the route. Its 78.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from JetBlue at 83.5% to Southwest at 78.0%.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 395 | 83.5% | 52 min | 1.77% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 626 | 78.0% | 60 min | 0.80% | B+ |
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Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 35 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am282 flights91.5%
- 8am–11am63 flights85.7%
- 11am–2pm61 flights70.5%
- 2pm–5pm56 flights56.6%
- 5pm–8pm161 flights62.0%
- 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 91.5% of the time, against 56.6% for the afternoon window. That is 35 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 282 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on ALB to MCO through the year
July is the worst month at 52.9% on time, 37 points below September, the best at 89.5%. 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 74 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 85.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 68.7%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on ALB to MCO runs when it is late
The 136 late arrivals split 55 under half an hour, 36 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 45 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early135 flights21.8%
- Within 15 min348 flights56.2%
- 15–29 min late55 flights8.9%
- 30–59 min late36 flights5.8%
- 1–2 hours late27 flights4.4%
- 2+ hours late18 flights2.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 619 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
38 of 139 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. In the other direction, 35 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at MCO.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on ALB to MCO
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 July 2026, 5 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 July 2026 | 5 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 March 2026 | 4 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 August 2026 | 4 hours 21 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 8 August 2026 | 3 hours 41 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 26 December 2025 | 3 hours 30 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
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 8,126 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,126 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 to one. The split is drawn from 8,126 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 3,093 minutes out of 8,126, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.80%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.3% 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 about an hour, 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.0% on time across 629 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. 626 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 Southwest on ALB to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 626 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 78.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 619 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ALB to MCO, every carrier
- Southwest on MCO to ALB, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on ALB to MCO83.5%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.