Route reliability record
MCO→ALB
Orlando to Albany
- Flights
- 1,056
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,073 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,056 MCO to ALB flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 633 at 71.9% on time.
Best time to fly MCO to ALB: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.5%, against 71.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 62 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,044 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.04%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
71.9% on time across 633 flights
These figures cover 1,056 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% 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 MCO to ALB
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 633 | 71.9% | 57 min | 0.95% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 423 | 70.6% | 67 min | 1.18% | C |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 71.9%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando to Albany
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MCO → ALBOrlando to Albany | Southwest Airlines | 71.2% | 71.9% | 0.95% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. MCO → ALBOrlando to Albany | JetBlue Airways | 69.8% | 70.6% | 1.18% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
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 41 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am47 flights97.9%
- 8am–11am301 flights86.3%
- 11am–2pm80 flights80.0%
- 2pm–5pm133 flights66.9%
- 5pm–8pm254 flights61.8%
- 8pm–5am241 flights56.8%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.8% on time, against 97.9% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 301 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 87.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. February was the busiest month here, with 114 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.0%. 20 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 50% of the 18,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 18,356 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 97.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.04% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,073 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 78.2% on time across 1,054 flights, 7 points above 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,056 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ALB after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,056 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 71.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,044 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to ALB questions
How often is MCO to ALB delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.6% of the 1,056 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to ALB?
Southwest Airlines leads at 71.9% on time across 633 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 70.6%, a gap of about a point. 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 MCO to ALB?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.8%, 41 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 MCO to ALB?
March is the weakest month at 55.2% on time, compared with 87.1% in September. Across the year that is 32 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
- ALB to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to ALB71.9%
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to ALB70.6%
- MCO to ATL, a related route75.6%
- ORD to ALB, a related route75.7%
- MCO to EWR, a related route73.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record71.9%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record70.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MCO to ALB and ALB to MCO 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.