Carrier route record
AACLT→MCO
American Airlines · Charlotte to Orlando
- Flights
- 3,676
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 78%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CLT to MCO 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 3,676 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 589 at 71.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on CLT to MCO runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 72 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,605 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.66%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.6%
Every carrier on CLT to MCO, 4,736 flights
These figures cover 3,676 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% 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
American against every carrier on CLT to MCO
American flew 3,676 of the 4,736 flights on CLT to MCO, most of the route. Its 70.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 71.9% to American at 70.4%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about 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 | 589 | 71.9% | 94 min | 2.72% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 471 | 70.5% | 64 min | 4.03% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 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.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on CLT to MCO
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am179 flights84.8%
- 8am–11am561 flights85.7%
- 11am–2pm872 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm582 flights63.5%
- 5pm–8pm904 flights59.0%
- 8pm–5am578 flights62.3%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.0% on time, against 85.7% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 904 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CLT to MCO through the year
July is the worst month at 46.7% on time, 33 points below March, the best at 79.3%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 338 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.9%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American 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 77,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 77,000 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 split is drawn from 77,405 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 85.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.66% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.8% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.8% on time across 3,679 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 3,676 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 American on CLT to MCO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 79.3% on time and July 46.7%, a swing of 33 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,605 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to MCO, every carrier
- American on MCO to CLT, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on CLT to MCO71.9%
- Spirit Airlines on CLT to MCO70.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) 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.