Route reliability record

IND→MCO

Indianapolis to Orlando

Flights: 2,408
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 829 mi
Carriers: 4

This route lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,408 flights, of which Spirit Airlines flew 421 at 84.7% on time.

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.

On time

79.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,366 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.37%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Spirit

84.7% on time across 421 flights

These figures cover 2,408 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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

Which airline is most reliable on IND to MCO

The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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.

On-time performance by carrier on IND to MCO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlines	421	84.7%	84 min	2.14%	B
Republic Airwaysthin sample	28	82.1%	33 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,623	79.6%	61 min	0.99%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	336	73.2%	116 min	2.38%	C

No carrier stands out. Spirit tops the table at 84.7%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 31 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am553 flights94.0%
8am–11am438 flights87.6%
11am–2pm333 flights84.8%
2pm–5pm304 flights75.8%
5pm–8pm502 flights64.8%
8pm–5am278 flights63.0%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.0% on time, against 94.0% 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 553 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 16 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, March worst

Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 71.0%. February is the strongest month at 86.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 16 points. March was the busiest month here, with 273 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.1%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why this route gets delayed

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 36,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
55%
National Airspace System
30%
Carrier
15%
Extreme weather
1%

55% 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 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 55 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 35,627 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 94.0% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.37%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

7.4% 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 are the a little over an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 829 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.2% on time across 2,404 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,408 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. February runs 86.5% on time and March 71.0%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,366 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

IND to MCO questions

How often is IND to MCO delayed?

About 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 20.4% of the 2,408 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on IND to MCO?

Spirit Airlines leads at 84.7% on time across 421 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 79.6%, a gap of 5 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 IND to MCO?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.0%, 31 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 IND to MCO?

March is the weakest month at 71.0% on time, compared with 86.5% in February. Across the year that is 16 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. IND to MCO and MCO to IND 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.

Key figures