Route reliability record
CLT→MCO
Charlotte to Orlando
- Flights
- 4,734
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 468 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,734 CLT to MCO flights, of which Frontier Airlines flew 677 at 73.0% on time.
Best time to fly CLT to MCO: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.7%, against 71.6% for the route overall.
Frontier Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 73.0% on time across 677 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,614 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.26%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Frontier
73.0% on time across 677 flights
These figures cover 4,734 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to MCO
The three carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines | 677 | 73.0% | 105 min | 3.69% | C− |
| American Airlines | 3,686 | 71.6% | 74 min | 1.71% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 371 | 68.9% | 60 min | 5.12% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 5.1% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on CLT to MCO
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to Orlando
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → MLBCharlotte to Melbourne | PSA Airlines | 76.5% | 78.8% | 2.96% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OH 5364 22:35 |
| 2. CLT → DABCharlotte to Daytona Beach | PSA Airlines | 75.8% | 78.4% | 3.35% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. CLT → MCOCharlotte to Orlando | American Airlines | 70.4% | 71.6% | 1.71% | 8am–11am, Wed | AA 1879 20:15 |
| 4. CLT → MCOCharlotte to Orlando | Frontier Airlines | 70.3% | 73.0% | 3.69% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
| 5. CLT → MCOCharlotte to Orlando | Spirit Airlines | 65.4% | 68.9% | 5.12% | 2pm–5pm, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 24 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am186 flights86.5%
- 8am–11am650 flights86.7%
- 11am–2pm1,124 flights78.7%
- 2pm–5pm853 flights65.2%
- 5pm–8pm1,015 flights62.3%
- 8pm–5am906 flights65.1%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.3% on time, against 86.7% for the 8am–11am 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 1,124 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLT 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 CLT to MCO, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 86.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 62.3%, a wide gap of 24.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am86.5%
- 8–11am86.7%
- 11am–2pm78.7%
- 2–5pm65.2%
- 5–8pm62.3%
- 8pm–5am65.1%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
August is the worst month at 58.6% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 77.5%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 468 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.7%, a spread of 21 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 101,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 101,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 101,072 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.26% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 468 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.6% on time across 4,735 flights, 7 points above 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,734 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MCO after this flight
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 77.5% on time and August 58.6%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 4,614 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to MCO questions
How often is CLT to MCO delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.4% of the 4,734 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to MCO?
Frontier Airlines leads at 73.0% on time across 677 flights. Spirit Airlines is at the other end on 68.9%, a gap of 4 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 CLT to MCO?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.3%, 24 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 August delays on CLT to MCO?
August is the weakest month at 58.6% on time, compared with 77.5% in September. Across the year that is 19 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 CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on CLT to MCO73.0%
- American Airlines on CLT to MCO71.6%
- Spirit Airlines on CLT to MCO68.9%
- CLT to ORD, a related route72.4%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- CLT to ATL, a related route81.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record73.0%
- American Airlines on-time record71.6%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record68.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. CLT to MCO and MCO to CLT 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.