Route reliability record
BDL→MCO
Hartford to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,892
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,050 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route 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 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,892 BDL to MCO flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 647 at 79.5% on time.
Best time to fly BDL to MCO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.3%, against 74.3% 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
74.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,848 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.85%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
79.5% on time across 647 flights
These figures cover 1,892 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BDL to MCO
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 79.5% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 72.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,013 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 647 | 79.5% | 55 min | 1.24% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,013 | 72.2% | 74 min | 2.17% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 223 | 69.3% | 106 min | 2.24% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 9 | 55.6% | 85 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Southwest leads JetBlue by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on BDL to MCO
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Hartford 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. BDL → MCOHartford to Orlando | Southwest Airlines | 78.5% | 79.5% | 1.24% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. BDL → MCOHartford to Orlando | JetBlue Airways | 70.6% | 72.2% | 2.17% | 5am–8am, Tue | B6 737 06:00 |
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 30 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am614 flights89.1%
- 8am–11am207 flights81.4%
- 11am–2pm214 flights78.7%
- 2pm–5pm402 flights61.3%
- 5pm–8pm299 flights58.6%
- 8pm–5am156 flights63.1%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.6% on time, against 89.1% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 614 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 36 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.
December is the weak month at 58.7% on time, against 94.3% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. April was the busiest month here, with 204 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.9%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 35,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 34,843 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 89.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.85% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.48%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,050 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 runs 72.7% on time across 1,890 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,892 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 94.3% on time and December 58.7%, a swing of 36 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,848 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BDL to MCO questions
How often is BDL to MCO delayed?
About 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 25.7% of the 1,892 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BDL to MCO?
Southwest Airlines leads at 79.5% on time across 647 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 72.2%, a gap of 7 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 BDL to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.6%, 30 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 December delays on BDL to MCO?
December is the weakest month at 58.7% on time, compared with 94.3% in September. Across the year that is 36 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 BDL — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on BDL to MCO79.5%
- JetBlue Airways on BDL to MCO72.2%
- Frontier Airlines on BDL to MCO69.3%
- BDL to ORD, a related route74.0%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- BDL to ATL, a related route83.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.5%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record72.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record69.3%
- 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. BDL to MCO and MCO to BDL 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.