Carrier route record
WNMCO→ALB
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Albany
- Flights
- 629
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 61%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MCO to ALB 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 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 629 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on MCO to ALB runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 63 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 620 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.27%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
68.9%
Every carrier on MCO to ALB, 1,024 flights
These figures cover 629 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MCO to ALB
Southwest flew 629 of the 1,024 flights on MCO to ALB, most of the route. Its 71.0% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 71.0% to JetBlue at 65.6%.
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 (this page) | 629 | 71.0% | 57 min | 1.27% | C |
| JetBlue Airways | 395 | 65.6% | 72 min | 1.27% | C |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 50 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am59 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am236 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm43 flights69.8%
- 2pm–5pm38 flights75.7%
- 5pm–8pm142 flights56.7%
- 8pm–5am111 flights42.9%
Scale runs 35% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 42.9% on time, against 93.2% 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 236 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to ALB through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 89.5% 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 76 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 62.0%, a spread of 20 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on MCO to ALB runs when it is late
The 180 late arrivals split 66 under half an hour, 57 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 57 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early69 flights11.1%
- Within 15 min371 flights59.8%
- 15–29 min late66 flights10.6%
- 30–59 min late57 flights9.2%
- 1–2 hours late38 flights6.1%
- 2+ hours late19 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 620 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
39 of 185 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. In the other direction, 34 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ALB.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on MCO to ALB
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 July 2026, 5 hours 52 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 July 2026 | 5 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 December 2025 | 5 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 December 2025 | 3 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 February 2026 | 3 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 November 2025 | 2 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 to one. The split is drawn from 10,202 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 93.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.27% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
9.2% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.0% on time across 626 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. 629 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.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on MCO to ALB
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 629 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 71.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 620 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to ALB, every carrier
- Southwest on ALB to MCO, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to ALB65.6%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.