Carrier route record
WNATL→MCO
Southwest Airlines · Atlanta to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,095
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on ATL to MCO sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,095 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Spirit Airlines, flew 368 at 73.5% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Southwest on ATL 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
74.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,076 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.19%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.3%
Every carrier on ATL to MCO, 8,267 flights
These figures cover 1,095 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on ATL to MCO
Southwest flew 1,095 of the 8,267 flights on ATL to MCO, about 13% of it. Its 74.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 74.5% to Frontier at 64.8%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Spirit Airlines arrives on time 73.5% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 64.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,270 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,095 | 74.5% | 60 min | 1.19% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 368 | 73.5% | 87 min | 4.62% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 5,534 | 70.5% | 65 min | 1.32% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,270 | 64.8% | 117 min | 2.20% | D |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.6% 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.
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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 37 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am123 flights89.3%
- 8am–11am253 flights89.7%
- 11am–2pm328 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm65 flights60.7%
- 5pm–8pm326 flights52.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.8% on time, against 89.7% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 328 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on ATL to MCO through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 60.4%. January is the strongest month at 92.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 32 points. October was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 66.5%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on ATL to MCO runs when it is late
The 274 late arrivals split 111 under half an hour, 72 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 91 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early89 flights8.3%
- Within 15 min713 flights66.3%
- 15–29 min late111 flights10.3%
- 30–59 min late72 flights6.7%
- 1–2 hours late59 flights5.5%
- 2+ hours late32 flights3.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,076 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
35 of 257 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 52 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on ATL to MCO
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 June 2026, 7 hours 50 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 a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 June 2026 | 7 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 June 2026 | 5 hours 38 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 4 August 2026 | 4 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 July 2026 | 4 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 July 2026 | 4 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 16,479 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 89.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.5% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 404 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.9% on time across 1,093 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,095 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on ATL to MCO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 92.1% on time and March 60.4%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,076 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to MCO, every carrier
- Southwest on MCO to ATL, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on ATL to MCO73.5%
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to MCO70.5%
- Frontier Airlines on ATL to MCO64.8%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- 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.