Carrier route record
WNBDL→MCO
Southwest Airlines · Hartford to Orlando
- Flights
- 647
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on BDL to MCO lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 647 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on BDL 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
79.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 638 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.3%
Every carrier on BDL to MCO, 1,892 flights
These figures cover 647 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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
Southwest against every carrier on BDL to MCO
Southwest flew 647 of the 1,892 flights on BDL to MCO, about 34% of it. Its 79.5% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 79.5% to Spirit at 55.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 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+ |
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 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am345 flights92.4%
- 8am–11am22 flights—
- 11am–2pm49 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm102 flights58.6%
- 5pm–8pm121 flights58.3%
- 8pm–5am8 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.3% on time, against 92.4% 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 345 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on BDL to MCO through the year
December is the weak month at 63.6% on time, against 92.9% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 66 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.7%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 44% of the 7,210 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.
- 44%National Airspace System
- 29%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
44% 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 3,199 minutes out of 7,210, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,210 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.5% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.3% on time across 647 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. 647 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 BDL to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 647 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 79.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 638 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BDL to MCO, every carrier
- Southwest on MCO to BDL, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on BDL to MCO72.2%
- Frontier Airlines on BDL to MCO69.3%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.