Route reliability record
BHM→MCO
Birmingham to Orlando
- Flights
- 859
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 479 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 2 points 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 859 BHM to MCO flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly BHM to MCO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.0%, against 79.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
79.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 852 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.47%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
79.2% on time across 859 flights
These figures cover 859 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 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
Which airline is most reliable on BHM to MCO
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 | 859 | 79.2% | 60 min | 0.47% | B+ |
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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 29 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am361 flights93.4%
- 8am–11am55 flights74.5%
- 11am–2pm109 flights77.4%
- 2pm–5pm44 flights68.2%
- 5pm–8pm290 flights64.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.7% on time, against 93.4% 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 361 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BHM 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 BHM to MCO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 64.7%, a wide gap of 28.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.4%
- 8–11am74.5%
- 11am–2pm77.4%
- 2–5pm68.2%
- 5–8pm64.7%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 70.6% on time, 22 points below September, the best at 92.1%. 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.8%, a spread of 16 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 13%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 10,580 reported delay minutes.
35% 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 3,675 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.47%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.9% 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 479 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.3% on time across 861 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 859 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MCO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 859 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 79.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 852 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BHM to MCO questions
How often is BHM to MCO delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.8% of the 859 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BHM to MCO compared with the rest of the country?
79.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BHM to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.7%, 29 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 BHM to MCO?
July is the weakest month at 70.6% on time, compared with 92.1% in September. Across the year that is 22 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 BHM — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- BHM to ATL, a related route87.2%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- BHM to DFW, a related route80.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. BHM to MCO and MCO to BHM 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.