Carrier route record
UACLE→MCO
United Airlines · Cleveland to Orlando
- Flights
- 562
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on CLE to MCO earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 562 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's CLE to MCO record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 118 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 557 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.6%
Every carrier on CLE to MCO, 2,069 flights
These figures cover 562 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on CLE to MCO
United flew 562 of the 2,069 flights on CLE to MCO, about 27% of it. Its 89.4% on time is 11 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 89.4% to Spirit at 42.9%. Two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 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+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on CLE to MCO
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 562 flights.
- 5am–8am127 flights93.7%
- 8am–11am233 flights91.4%
- 11am–2pm202 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 84.3% on time against 93.7% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 233 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on CLE to MCO through the year
December is the weak month at 72.7% on time, against 96.7% 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 61 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 87.2%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United 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 4,078 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
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 93.7% on time here. The split is drawn from 4,078 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. late-arriving aircraft at 33%, carrier at 31% and national airspace system at 27% split the 4,078 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.
Cancellations are rare at 0.36%, 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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 return leg runs 86.5% on time across 561 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 562 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 United on CLE to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 562 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 89.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 557 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to MCO, every carrier
- United on MCO to CLE, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on CLE to MCO77.2%
- Frontier Airlines on CLE to MCO74.1%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.