Carrier route record
WNFLL→MCO
Southwest Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Orlando
- Flights
- 627
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on FLL to MCO earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 627 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's FLL to MCO record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 91 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 618 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.6%
Every carrier on FLL to MCO, 1,446 flights
These figures cover 627 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 FLL to MCO
Southwest flew 627 of the 1,446 flights on FLL to MCO, about 43% of it. Its 86.7% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 86.7% to Spirit at 72.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 627 | 86.7% | 66 min | 1.28% | A |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 83 | 75.9% | 52 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 736 | 72.0% | 66 min | 1.09% | C |
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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am328 flights97.5%
- 8am–11am30 flights93.3%
- 11am–2pm2 flights—
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm261 flights72.9%
- 8pm–5am5 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.5% of the time, against 72.9% for the evening window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 328 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on FLL to MCO through the year
August is the worst month at 75.4% on time, 21 points below July, the best at 96.8%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 93.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 80.7%. 13 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 47% of the 5,428 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
47% 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 5,428 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 5,428 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 97.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.28% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 177 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.2% on time across 626 flights, 18 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 18 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 627 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 FLL to MCO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 627 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 86.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 618 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to MCO, every carrier
- Southwest on MCO to FLL, the return leg
- Spirit Airlines on FLL to MCO72.0%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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 7.04 million flight records
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.