Route reliability record
BWI→MCO
Baltimore to Orlando
- Flights
- 4,747
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 787 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.4%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,747 flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 3,570 at 76.6% on time.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.6% on time across 3,570 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,627 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.23%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Southwest
76.6% on time across 3,570 flights
These figures cover 4,747 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 BWI to MCO
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 76.6% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 69.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 656 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 3,570 | 76.6% | 65 min | 2.10% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 521 | 73.6% | 93 min | 2.50% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 656 | 69.2% | 78 min | 2.74% | C |
Southwest leads Spirit by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 31 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am526 flights92.1%
- 8am–11am1,193 flights82.3%
- 11am–2pm792 flights76.8%
- 2pm–5pm907 flights72.2%
- 5pm–8pm791 flights60.7%
- 8pm–5am538 flights66.4%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.7% on time, against 92.1% 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.
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 65.0% on time, 22 points below September, the best at 87.0%. 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.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.0%. 16 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 81,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%National Airspace System
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
37% 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 30,000 minutes out of 81,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
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 92.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.23% against a national 1.80%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
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. 9.3% 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 787 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 75.4% on time across 4,753 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 4,747 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. September runs 87.0% on time and July 65.0%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else.
Common questions
BWI to MCO questions
How often is BWI to MCO delayed?
About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.8% of the 4,747 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 BWI to MCO?
Southwest Airlines leads at 76.6% on time across 3,570 flights. Spirit Airlines is at the other end on 69.2%, 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 BWI to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.7%, 31 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 BWI to MCO?
July is the weakest month at 65.0% on time, compared with 87.0% 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 BWI — the return legseparate record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record73.6%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record69.2%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
Direction matters. BWI to MCO and MCO to BWI 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.