Route reliability record
DTW→MCO
Detroit to Orlando
- Flights
- 3,600
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 957 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,600 DTW to MCO flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 777 at 77.2% on time.
Best time to fly DTW to MCO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 80.2%, against 75.4% for the route overall.
Spirit Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.2% on time across 777 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,549 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.97%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Spirit
77.2% on time across 777 flights
These figures cover 3,600 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DTW to MCO
The three 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlines | 777 | 77.2% | 65 min | 1.16% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,211 | 75.3% | 73 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 495 | 74.9% | 96 min | 1.62% | C |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 117 | 67.2% | 57 min | 0.00% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Spirit tops the table at 77.2%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on DTW 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 Detroit 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. DTW → MCODetroit to Orlando | Spirit Airlines | 76.3% | 77.2% | 1.16% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. DTW → MCODetroit to Orlando | Delta Air Lines | 74.7% | 75.3% | 0.81% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 2555 07:05 |
| 3. DTW → MCODetroit to Orlando | Frontier Airlines | 73.7% | 74.9% | 1.62% | 11am–2pm, Thu | — |
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 23 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am762 flights87.1%
- 8am–11am745 flights80.1%
- 11am–2pm571 flights76.4%
- 2pm–5pm638 flights68.1%
- 5pm–8pm574 flights66.8%
- 8pm–5am310 flights64.0%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.0% on time, against 87.1% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 762 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DTW 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 DTW to MCO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 87.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 64.0%, a wide gap of 23.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am87.1%
- 8–11am80.1%
- 11am–2pm76.4%
- 2–5pm68.1%
- 5–8pm66.8%
- 8pm–5am64.0%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
January is the weak month at 61.2% on time, against 86.8% 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 413 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.5%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 44% of the 64,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 28,000 of the 64,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 64,218 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.97% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.44%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.0% 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.
The 957 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 runs 72.9% on time across 3,594 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 3,600 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 86.8% on time and January 61.2%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 3,549 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DTW to MCO questions
How often is DTW to MCO delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.6% of the 3,600 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 DTW to MCO?
Spirit Airlines leads at 77.2% on time across 777 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 74.9%, a gap of 2 points. 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 DTW to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.0%, 23 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 January delays on DTW to MCO?
January is the weakest month at 61.2% on time, compared with 86.8% in September. Across the year that is 26 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 DTW — the return legseparate record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to MCO77.2%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to MCO75.3%
- Frontier Airlines on DTW to MCO74.9%
- Southwest Airlines on DTW to MCO67.2%
- DTW to ORD, a related route72.2%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- DTW to ATL, a related route78.9%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record77.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record75.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record74.9%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. DTW to MCO and MCO to DTW 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.