Route reliability record
CVG→MCO
Cincinnati to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,791
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 757 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,791 CVG to MCO flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 721 at 80.7% on time.
Best time to fly CVG 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 86.6%, against 79.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,754 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.40%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
80.7% on time across 721 flights
These figures cover 1,791 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CVG to MCO
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 721 | 80.7% | 60 min | 1.53% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 821 | 79.3% | 89 min | 1.46% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 14 | 78.6% | 42 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 235 | 77.1% | 53 min | 0.85% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 80.7%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on CVG 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 Cincinnati to Orlando
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CVG → MCOCincinnati to Orlando | Delta Air Lines | 79.5% | 80.7% | 1.53% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 511 08:00 |
| 2. CVG → MCOCincinnati to Orlando | Frontier Airlines | 78.1% | 79.3% | 1.46% | 5am–8am, 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 25 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am279 flights85.4%
- 8am–11am513 flights86.7%
- 11am–2pm199 flights75.6%
- 2pm–5pm504 flights76.2%
- 5pm–8pm167 flights77.0%
- 8pm–5am129 flights61.4%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.4% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 513 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CVG 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 CVG to MCO, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 86.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 61.4%, a wide gap of 25.3 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am85.4%
- 8–11am86.7%
- 11am–2pm75.6%
- 2–5pm76.2%
- 5–8pm77.0%
- 8pm–5am61.4%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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.
December is the weak month at 65.5% on time, against 92.4% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 185 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.0%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 26,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 25,918 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 1.40% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.67%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 757 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.7% on time across 1,790 flights, 5 points below 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,791 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 92.4% on time and December 65.5%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,754 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CVG to MCO questions
How often is CVG to MCO delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.4% of the 1,791 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 CVG to MCO?
Delta Air Lines leads at 80.7% on time across 721 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 79.3%, a gap of about 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 CVG to MCO?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.4%, 25 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 December delays on CVG to MCO?
December is the weakest month at 65.5% on time, compared with 92.4% in September. Across the year that is 27 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 CVG — the return legseparate record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on CVG to MCO80.7%
- Frontier Airlines on CVG to MCO79.3%
- Southwest Airlines on CVG to MCO77.1%
- CVG to ORD, a related route70.8%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- CVG to ATL, a related route85.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record80.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record79.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record78.6%
- 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. CVG to MCO and MCO to CVG 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.