Carrier route record

WNCVG→MCO

Southwest Airlines · Cincinnati to Orlando

Flights: 226
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on CVG to MCO lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 226 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 821 at 81.0% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on CVG to MCO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 218 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.88%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.9%

Every carrier on CVG to MCO, 1,783 flights

These figures cover 226 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on CVG to MCO

Southwest flew 226 of the 1,783 flights on CVG to MCO, about 13% of it. Its 78.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 81.0% to Southwest at 78.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two 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 CVG to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlines	821	81.0%	91 min	1.22%	B
Delta Air Lines	722	79.3%	61 min	1.11%	B
Republic Airwaysthin sample	14	78.6%	42 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	226	78.0%	52 min	0.88%	B+

No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 81.0%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 226 flights.

5am–8am8 flights—
8am–11am13 flights—
11am–2pm75 flights81.4%
2pm–5pm89 flights73.3%
5pm–8pm41 flights75.6%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 81.4% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 73.3%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 89 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on CVG to MCO through the year

Jul–Sep 202529 flights—
Oct–Dec 202562 flights78.7%
Jan–Mar 202658 flights80.0%
Apr–Jun 202677 flights82.2%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 78.0% on time across 226 flights.

Quarter by quarter Southwest on CVG to MCO held fairly steady: 78.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 80.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 82.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 87.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 73.6%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 2,509 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
48%
National Airspace System
36%
Carrier
14%
Extreme weather
3%

48% 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 2,509 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 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 2,509 reported delay minutes.

36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 905 minutes out of 2,509, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.88%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.5% on time across 226 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 226 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking Southwest on CVG to MCO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 226 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 78.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 218 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures