Route reliability record
HOU→MCO
Houston to Orlando
- Flights
- 2,035
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 849 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 2,035 HOU to MCO flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly HOU to MCO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.3%, against 77.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,014 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
77.0% on time across 2,035 flights
These figures cover 2,035 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on HOU to MCO
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 | 2,035 | 77.0% | 52 min | 0.79% | B+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to Orlando
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAH → MCOHouston to Orlando | United Airlines | 84.5% | 85.1% | 0.65% | 5am–8am, Mon | UA 2245 07:20 |
| 2. HOU → MCOHouston to Orlando | Southwest Airlines | 76.4% | 77.0% | 0.79% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. IAH → MCOHouston to Orlando | Spirit Airlines | 73.7% | 75.5% | 2.42% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. IAH → MCOHouston to Orlando | Frontier Airlines | 71.9% | 72.6% | 0.93% | 8am–11am, Wed | F9 1418 13:29 |
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 35 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–8am526 flights90.7%
- 8am–11am299 flights88.1%
- 11am–2pm248 flights80.8%
- 2pm–5pm321 flights66.5%
- 5pm–8pm493 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am148 flights56.2%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.2% on time, against 90.7% 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 526 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 89.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. December was the busiest month here, with 190 flights.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 4 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 24,014 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 90.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.79%, 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 actually costs
6.4% 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 849 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 runs 77.0% on time across 2,023 flights, within half a point 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 2,035 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 89.9% on time and March 59.9%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,014 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to MCO questions
How often is HOU to MCO delayed?
Roughly 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 23.0% of the 2,035 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is HOU to MCO compared with the rest of the country?
77.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HOU to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.2%, 35 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 March delays on HOU to MCO?
March is the weakest month at 59.9% on time, compared with 89.9% in September. Across the year that is 30 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 HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- HOU to DAL, a related route80.9%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.7%
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. HOU to MCO and MCO to HOU 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.