Route reliability record
CLT→MCO
Charlotte to Orlando
- Flights
- 4,758
- Period
- June 2025 to May 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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.4%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,758 flights, of which Frontier Airlines flew 565 at 69.8% on time.
Frontier Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 69.8% on time across 565 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,645 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.12%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Frontier
69.8% on time across 565 flights
These figures cover 4,758 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% 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: half a point 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 | 565 | 69.8% | 92 min | 2.65% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 508 | 69.7% | 66 min | 3.74% | C− |
| American Airlines | 3,685 | 69.4% | 72 min | 1.82% | C |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.7% 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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am247 flights86.5%
- 8am–11am632 flights84.5%
- 11am–2pm1,050 flights78.1%
- 2pm–5pm838 flights65.3%
- 5pm–8pm1,127 flights55.7%
- 8pm–5am864 flights64.7%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.7% on time, against 86.5% 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 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.
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.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.1%. 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 43% of the 104,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 104,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 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 86.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.12% against a national 1.80%, 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. 12.5% 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.
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 77.9% on time across 4,760 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 4,758 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.
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 30.5% of the 4,758 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 CLT to MCO?
Frontier Airlines leads at 69.8% on time across 565 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 69.4%, a gap of half a point. 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 86.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 55.7%, 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 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.
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-time record69.8%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record69.7%
- American Airlines on-time record69.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.