Carrier route record
WNMCO→ATL
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,093
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MCO to ATL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,093 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 5,531 at 78.3% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.3% on time across 5,531 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,075 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.56%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on MCO to ATL, 8,259 flights
These figures cover 1,093 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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 ATL
Southwest flew 1,093 of the 8,259 flights on MCO to ATL, about 13% of it. Its 69.9% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.3% to Spirit at 65.1%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 78.3% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 65.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 369 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 5,531 | 78.3% | 88 min | 1.39% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,093 | 69.9% | 64 min | 1.56% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,266 | 67.2% | 76 min | 2.21% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 369 | 65.1% | 65 min | 3.79% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.8% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 32 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am361 flights88.3%
- 11am–2pm50 flights69.4%
- 2pm–5pm316 flights63.3%
- 5pm–8pm254 flights56.0%
- 8pm–5am111 flights59.6%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.0% on time, against 88.3% for the 8am–11am 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 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to ATL through the year
July is the worst month at 54.9% on time, 26 points below November, the best at 81.2%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.3%, a spread of 27 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on MCO to ATL runs when it is late
The 324 late arrivals split 120 under half an hour, 89 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 115 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early150 flights14.0%
- Within 15 min601 flights55.9%
- 15–29 min late120 flights11.2%
- 30–59 min late89 flights8.3%
- 1–2 hours late70 flights6.5%
- 2+ hours late45 flights4.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,075 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
78 of 357 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. 45 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on MCO to ATL
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 August 2026, 6 hours 40 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 August 2026 | 6 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 July 2026 | 5 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 May 2026 | 4 hours 55 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 November 2025 | 4 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 August 2026 | 4 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 20,610 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.56% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
10.7% 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.
At 404 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.5% on time across 1,095 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,093 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 ATL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,093 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 69.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,075 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to ATL, every carrier
- Southwest on ATL to MCO, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MCO to ATL78.3%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to ATL67.2%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to ATL65.1%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.