Route reliability record
ISP→MCO
Islip to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,442
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 971 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,442 ISP to MCO flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 416 at 76.7% on time.
Best time to fly ISP to MCO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.4% of the time and Thursday flights 79.3%, against 74.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,404 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.87%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
JetBlue
76.7% on time across 416 flights
These figures cover 1,442 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 ISP to MCO
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JetBlue Airways | 416 | 76.7% | 85 min | 1.68% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 360 | 74.9% | 86 min | 2.78% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 666 | 72.8% | 59 min | 1.50% | C |
No carrier stands out. JetBlue tops the table at 76.7%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Islip 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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. EWR → MCONewark to Orlando | United Airlines | 78.0% | 79.8% | 2.21% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 2215 14:05 |
| 2. ISP → MCOIslip to Orlando | JetBlue Airways | 75.4% | 76.7% | 1.68% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. JFK → MCONew York to Orlando | Delta Air Lines | 73.7% | 76.2% | 3.23% | 5am–8am, Wed | DL 2049 07:05 |
| 4. EWR → MCONewark to Orlando | JetBlue Airways | 72.5% | 75.8% | 4.38% | 5am–8am, Thu | B6 927 06:00 |
| 5. HPN → MCOWhite Plains to Orlando | JetBlue Airways | 72.4% | 74.5% | 2.79% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 595 16:00 |
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 31 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am304 flights88.4%
- 8am–11am259 flights81.5%
- 11am–2pm257 flights81.4%
- 2pm–5pm236 flights65.4%
- 5pm–8pm315 flights57.6%
- 8pm–5am71 flights68.2%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.6% on time, against 88.4% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 315 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ISP 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 ISP to MCO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 88.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 57.6%, a wide gap of 30.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am88.4%
- 8–11am81.5%
- 11am–2pm81.4%
- 2–5pm65.4%
- 5–8pm57.6%
- 8pm–5am68.2%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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.
December is the weak month at 66.9% on time, against 82.0% in October. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 143 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 79.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.3%, a spread of 10 points.
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 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 26,061 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 88.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.87% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.76%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.6% 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 971 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 76.2% on time across 1,441 flights, within 2 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 1,442 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. October runs 82.0% on time and December 66.9%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,404 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ISP to MCO questions
How often is ISP 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 25.6% of the 1,442 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 ISP to MCO?
JetBlue Airways leads at 76.7% on time across 416 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 72.8%, a gap of 4 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 ISP to MCO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.6%, 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 December delays on ISP to MCO?
December is the weakest month at 66.9% on time, compared with 82.0% in October. Across the year that is 15 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 ISP — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- JetBlue Airways on ISP to MCO76.7%
- Frontier Airlines on ISP to MCO74.9%
- Southwest Airlines on ISP to MCO72.8%
- ISP to BWI, a related route85.1%
- ATL to MCO, a related route70.3%
- ISP to PBI, a related route72.1%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record76.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record74.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record72.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. ISP to MCO and MCO to ISP 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.