Route reliability record

BOS→MCO

Boston to Orlando

Flights: 4,644
Period: June 2025 to May 2026
Distance: 1,121 mi
Carriers: 6

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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.4%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,644 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,257 at 74.8% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 74.8% on time across 1,257 flights.

On time

70.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,496 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.67%

National rate is 1.80%

Best carrier

Delta

74.8% on time across 1,257 flights

These figures cover 4,644 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% 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 BOS to MCO

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 74.8% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 64.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 577 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on BOS to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlinesthin sample	179	76.3%	107 min	3.35%	B−
Delta Air Lines	1,257	74.8%	79 min	1.99%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	136	70.1%	65 min	0.74%	C+
JetBlue Airways	2,491	68.2%	73 min	2.85%	C
Spirit Airlines	577	64.7%	80 min	3.64%	D−
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	4	50.0%	19 min	0.00%	F+

Spirit Airlines cancels 3.6% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

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 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am875 flights86.6%
8am–11am778 flights75.2%
11am–2pm894 flights73.2%
2pm–5pm1,032 flights59.0%
5pm–8pm617 flights62.9%
8pm–5am448 flights56.9%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.9% on time, against 86.6% 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.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 17 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, December worst

December is the weak month at 60.7% on time, against 77.6% in May. 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.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.1%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why this route gets delayed

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 103,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
National Airspace System
29%
Carrier
28%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

41% 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 103,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 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 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 86.6% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.67%, against 1.80% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

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. 12.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% 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 1,121 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 70.3% on time across 4,646 flights, within half a point 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 4,644 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.

What to do with this

Booking this route

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 77.6% on time and December 60.7%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else.

Common questions

BOS to MCO questions

How often is BOS to MCO delayed?

Roughly one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.0% of the 4,644 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on BOS to MCO?

Delta Air Lines leads at 74.8% on time across 1,257 flights. Spirit Airlines is at the other end on 64.7%, 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 BOS to MCO?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.9%, 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 BOS to MCO?

December is the weakest month at 60.7% on time, compared with 77.6% in May. Across the year that is 17 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. BOS to MCO and MCO to BOS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures