Carrier route record
WNCVG→MCO
Southwest Airlines · Cincinnati to Orlando
- Flights
- 235
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That rests on 235 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 721 at 80.7% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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.
Key figures
On time
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 227 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.85%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.6%
Every carrier on CVG to MCO, 1,791 flights
These figures cover 235 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 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
Southwest against every carrier on CVG to MCO
Southwest flew 235 of the 1,791 flights on CVG to MCO, about 13% of it. Its 77.1% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.7% to Southwest at 77.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airlines (this page)thin 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.
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Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 13 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am8 flights—
- 8am–11am13 flights—
- 11am–2pm84 flights79.7%
- 2pm–5pm70 flights79.1%
- 5pm–8pm60 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% 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 79.7% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 66.7%. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 84 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on CVG to MCO through the year
- Oct–Dec 202562 flights78.7%
- Jan–Mar 202658 flights80.0%
- Apr–Jun 202677 flights82.2%
- Jul–Sep 202638 flights60.5%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 77.1% on time across 235 flights.
Southwest on CVG to MCO did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 82.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 60.5%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 59 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 82.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 71.8%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on CVG to MCO runs when it is late
The 52 late arrivals split 19 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 15 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early25 flights11.0%
- Within 15 min150 flights66.1%
- 15–29 min late19 flights8.4%
- 30–59 min late18 flights7.9%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights4.4%
- 2+ hours late5 flights2.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 227 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 53 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. 11 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on CVG to MCO
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 June 2026, 2 hours 57 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 June 2026 | 2 hours 57 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 26 December 2025 | 2 hours 47 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 30 July 2026 | 2 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 March 2026 | 2 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 April 2026 | 2 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 2,756 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 11%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,756 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 to one. The split is drawn from 2,756 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 940 minutes out of 2,756, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.85%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.6% 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 roughly 55 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.7% on time across 235 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 235 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. 235 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 77.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 227 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to MCO, every carrier
- Southwest on MCO to CVG, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on CVG to MCO80.7%
- Frontier Airlines on CVG to MCO79.3%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) 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.