Route reliability record

CLT→MCO

Charlotte to Orlando

Flights: 4,736
Period: July 2025 to June 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,736 flights, of which Frontier Airlines flew 589 at 71.9% on time.

Frontier Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.9% on time across 589 flights.

On time

70.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,628 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.03%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Frontier

71.9% on time across 589 flights

These figures cover 4,736 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% 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 CLT to MCO

The three carriers here are closely matched: 2 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.

On-time performance by carrier on CLT to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines	589	71.9%	94 min	2.72%	C
Spirit Airlines	471	70.5%	64 min	4.03%	C−
American Airlines	3,676	70.4%	73 min	1.66%	C

Spirit Airlines cancels 4.0% 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 28 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am247 flights85.8%
8am–11am621 flights85.4%
11am–2pm1,062 flights78.9%
2pm–5pm833 flights65.9%
5pm–8pm1,102 flights58.2%
8pm–5am871 flights65.4%

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

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.2% on time, against 85.8% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 1,102 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 28 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.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 49.5% on time, 28 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 80.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.2%. 20 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 44% of the 101,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
National Airspace System
26%
Carrier
25%
Extreme weather
5%
Security
0%

44% 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 101,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 101,018 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 85.8% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.03% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.

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. 11.9% 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.

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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.4% on time across 4,739 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 4,736 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 77.5% on time and July 49.5%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 4,628 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 three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.4% of the 4,736 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 71.9% on time across 589 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 70.4%, a gap of 2 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 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.2%, 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 July delays on CLT to MCO?

July is the weakest month at 49.5% on time, compared with 77.5% in September. Across the year that is 28 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. 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.

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

Key figures