Route reliability record
IAH→MCO
Houston to Orlando
- Flights
- 3,669
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 854 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,669 flights, of which United Airlines flew 2,471 at 85.1% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 85.1% on time across 2,471 flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,615 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.01%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
85.1% on time across 2,471 flights
These figures cover 3,669 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IAH to MCO
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 85.1% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 72.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 536 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,471 | 85.1% | 71 min | 0.65% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 662 | 75.5% | 84 min | 2.42% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 536 | 72.6% | 110 min | 0.93% | C+ |
The spread between United and Frontier is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 24 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am489 flights93.4%
- 8am–11am629 flights90.9%
- 11am–2pm587 flights82.1%
- 2pm–5pm792 flights78.6%
- 5pm–8pm715 flights75.6%
- 8pm–5am457 flights69.4%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.4% of the time, against 69.4% for the overnight window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 792 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
July is the worst month at 64.7% on time, 25 points below September, the best at 90.0%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 366 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.8%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 55,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% 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 55,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 54,804 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 93.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.46%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.1% 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 are the an hour and a half kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 854 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 82.0% on time across 3,670 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 3,669 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.
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 90.0% on time and July 64.7%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,615 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IAH to MCO questions
How often is IAH to MCO delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.4% of the 3,669 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on IAH to MCO?
United Airlines leads at 85.1% on time across 2,471 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 72.6%, a gap of 13 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 IAH to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 69.4%, 24 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 July delays on IAH to MCO?
July is the weakest month at 64.7% on time, compared with 90.0% in September. Across the year that is 25 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 IAH — the return legseparate record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record85.1%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record75.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record72.6%
- 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. IAH to MCO and MCO to IAH are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.