Carrier route record
AACLT→MCO
American Airlines · Charlotte to Orlando
- Flights
- 3,686
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 78%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,686 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 677 at 73.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on CLT to MCO runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 57 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,612 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.71%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.6%
Every carrier on CLT to MCO, 4,734 flights
These figures cover 3,686 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
American against every carrier on CLT to MCO
American flew 3,686 of the 4,734 flights on CLT to MCO, most of the route. Its 71.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 71.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 73.0% to Spirit at 68.9%.
The two 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 (this page) | 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
American flight numbers on CLT to MCO
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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 25 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am172 flights86.0%
- 8am–11am572 flights87.0%
- 11am–2pm886 flights79.1%
- 2pm–5pm613 flights62.9%
- 5pm–8pm871 flights62.1%
- 8pm–5am572 flights63.9%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.1% on time, against 87.0% 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 886 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on CLT to MCO through the year
July is the worst month at 56.2% on time, 23 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 82.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.4%, a spread of 23 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on CLT to MCO runs when it is late
The 1,026 late arrivals split 314 under half an hour, 298 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 414 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early721 flights20.0%
- Within 15 min1,865 flights51.6%
- 15–29 min late314 flights8.7%
- 30–59 min late298 flights8.3%
- 1–2 hours late248 flights6.9%
- 2+ hours late166 flights4.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 3,612 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
174 of 1,014 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. In the other direction, 186 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at MCO.
The worst days
Worst days for American on CLT to MCO
The latest arrival of the period was on 1 August 2026, 12 hours 17 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 August 2026 | 12 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 December 2025 | 12 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 11 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 December 2025 | 11 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 January 2026 | 11 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 76,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 76,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 76,122 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 87.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.71% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here 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 79.3% on time across 3,686 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 3,686 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 56.2%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,612 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 MCO73.0%
- Spirit Airlines on CLT to MCO68.9%
- 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 7.05 million flight records
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.