Carrier route record
WNMCO→ATL
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,093
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 5,463 at 79.1% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.1% on time across 5,463 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,077 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.6%
Every carrier on MCO to ATL, 8,207 flights
These figures cover 1,093 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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
Southwest against every carrier on MCO to ATL
Southwest flew 1,093 of the 8,207 flights on MCO to ATL, about 13% of it. Its 71.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 79.1% to Spirit at 64.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 79.1% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 471 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 5,463 | 79.1% | 88 min | 1.24% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,093 | 71.3% | 59 min | 1.37% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,180 | 67.7% | 74 min | 1.53% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 471 | 64.5% | 68 min | 2.97% | D |
The spread between Delta and Spirit is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 35 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am15 flights—
- 8am–11am347 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm64 flights73.0%
- 2pm–5pm300 flights66.4%
- 5pm–8pm233 flights58.3%
- 8pm–5am134 flights54.5%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.5% on time, against 89.3% 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 347 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to ATL through the year
August is the worst month at 58.1% on time, 23 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 82.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.3%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
43% 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 9 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 18,274 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 89.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.3% 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.
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 75.4% on time across 1,095 flights, 4 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 4 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 71.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,077 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 ATL79.1%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to ATL67.7%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to ATL64.5%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.