Route reliability record
CLE→MCO
Cleveland to Orlando
- Flights
- 2,069
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 895 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,069 flights, of which United Airlines flew 562 at 89.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
78.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,046 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
89.4% on time across 562 flights
These figures cover 2,069 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 CLE to MCO
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 89.4% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 74.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,190 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 562 | 89.4% | 69 min | 0.36% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 310 | 77.2% | 80 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,190 | 74.1% | 98 min | 1.09% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 7 | 42.9% | 113 min | 0.00% | F+ |
The spread between United and Frontier is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 28 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am314 flights89.7%
- 8am–11am519 flights87.2%
- 11am–2pm515 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm298 flights70.3%
- 5pm–8pm284 flights62.1%
- 8pm–5am139 flights69.6%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.1% on time, against 89.7% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 519 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
January is the weak month at 66.7% on time, against 89.5% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 235 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.5%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 40,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
47% 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 40,000 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 split is drawn from 39,767 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 89.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.72%, below the national 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 895 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 sample behind these figures is 2,069 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 89.5% on time and January 66.7%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 2,046 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to MCO questions
How often is CLE to MCO delayed?
About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.4% of the 2,069 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CLE to MCO?
United Airlines leads at 89.4% on time across 562 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 74.1%, a gap of 15 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 CLE to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.1%, 28 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 January delays on CLE to MCO?
January is the weakest month at 66.7% on time, compared with 89.5% in May. Across the year that is 23 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
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record89.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record74.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
The reverse direction, MCO to CLE, does not clear this site’s 365-flight floor and has no page of its own.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.