Route reliability record
AUS→MCO
Austin to Orlando
- Flights
- 2,848
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 994 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,848 AUS to MCO flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 598 at 79.9% on time.
Best time to fly AUS to MCO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.6%, against 72.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 48 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,799 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
79.9% on time across 598 flights
These figures cover 2,848 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to MCO
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 79.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 69.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,902 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 180 | 83.0% | 75 min | 2.22% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 598 | 79.9% | 63 min | 1.17% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,902 | 69.7% | 57 min | 0.89% | C+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 168 | 65.6% | 112 min | 6.55% | C− |
Delta leads Southwest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Austin 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. AUS → MCOAustin to Orlando | Delta Air Lines | 79.0% | 79.9% | 1.17% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. AUS → MCOAustin to Orlando | Southwest Airlines | 69.1% | 69.7% | 0.89% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 33 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am417 flights88.9%
- 8am–11am738 flights87.2%
- 11am–2pm337 flights79.1%
- 2pm–5pm608 flights58.2%
- 5pm–8pm592 flights56.1%
- 8pm–5am156 flights60.5%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.1% on time, against 88.9% for the 5am–8am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 738 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter AUS to MCO by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On AUS to MCO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 88.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 56.1%, a wide gap of 32.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am88.9%
- 8–11am87.2%
- 11am–2pm79.1%
- 2–5pm58.2%
- 5–8pm56.1%
- 8pm–5am60.5%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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.
July is the worst month at 60.9% on time, 27 points below September, the best at 87.9%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 294 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.4%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 48,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 48,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 to one. The split is drawn from 47,934 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.8% 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 994 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 76.9% on time across 2,848 flights, 4 points above 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,848 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MCO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 87.9% on time and July 60.9%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,799 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AUS to MCO questions
How often is AUS to MCO delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.5% of the 2,848 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to MCO?
Delta Air Lines leads at 79.9% on time across 598 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 69.7%, a gap of 10 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 AUS to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.1%, 33 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 July delays on AUS to MCO?
July is the weakest month at 60.9% on time, compared with 87.9% in September. Across the year that is 27 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 AUS — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on AUS to MCO83.0%
- Delta Air Lines on AUS to MCO79.9%
- Southwest Airlines on AUS to MCO69.7%
- Spirit Airlines on AUS to MCO65.6%
- AUS to DEN, a related route78.9%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- AUS to DFW, a related route74.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record83.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record79.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record69.7%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. AUS to MCO and MCO to AUS 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.