Carrier route record

WNBDL→MCO

Southwest Airlines · Hartford to Orlando

Flights: 640
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 34%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on BDL to MCO lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 640 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 BDL to MCO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 630 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.09%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

73.3%

Every carrier on BDL to MCO, 1,869 flights

These figures cover 640 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 BDL to MCO

Southwest flew 640 of the 1,869 flights on BDL to MCO, about 34% of it. Its 78.3% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 78.3% to Frontier at 69.2%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on BDL to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)	640	78.3%	61 min	1.09%	B
JetBlue Airways	1,002	71.0%	75 min	2.50%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	227	69.2%	104 min	2.64%	C

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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 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am314 flights92.6%
8am–11am21 flights—
11am–2pm47 flights80.4%
2pm–5pm118 flights58.8%
5pm–8pm132 flights59.2%
8pm–5am8 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.6% of the time, against 58.8% for the afternoon window. That is 34 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 314 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on BDL to MCO through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 50.0% on time, 43 points below September, the best at 92.9%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 66 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 74.4%, a spread of 12 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Southwest on BDL to MCO runs when it is late

The 137 late arrivals split 56 under half an hour, 43 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 38 an hour or more.

15+ min early138 flights21.9%
Within 15 min355 flights56.3%
15–29 min late56 flights8.9%
30–59 min late43 flights6.8%
1–2 hours late20 flights3.2%
2+ hours late18 flights2.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 630 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

35 of 132 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. In the other direction, 40 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 BDL to MCO

The latest arrival of the period was on 16 February 2026, 6 hours 30 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across February, July, January and August, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Southwest on BDL to MCO in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
16 February 2026	6 hours 30 minutes	Carrier
27 July 2026	6 hours 17 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
18 July 2026	5 hours 35 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
18 January 2026	4 hours 29 minutes	Carrier
8 August 2026	3 hours 39 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 8,297 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Carrier
27%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
1%

39% 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 3,204 minutes out of 8,297, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,297 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 92.6% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.47%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.0% 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 1,050 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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.5% on time across 640 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 640 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. 640 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 78.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 630 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures