Route reliability record
MCO→AUS
Orlando to Austin
- Flights
- 2,848
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 994 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 2,848 MCO to AUS flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 598 at 78.4% on time.
Best time to fly MCO to AUS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.5%, against 76.9% 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
76.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,808 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.16%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
78.4% on time across 598 flights
These figures cover 2,848 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 MCO to AUS
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 180 | 84.7% | 55 min | 1.67% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 598 | 78.4% | 116 min | 1.34% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,901 | 76.0% | 59 min | 0.84% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 169 | 74.2% | 97 min | 3.55% | C− |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 78.4%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on MCO to AUS
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando to Austin
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 → AUSOrlando to Austin | Delta Air Lines | 77.3% | 78.4% | 1.34% | 11am–2pm, Wed | DL 2259 12:24 |
| 2. MCO → AUSOrlando to Austin | Southwest Airlines | 75.4% | 76.0% | 0.84% | 5am–8am, 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 33 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am372 flights95.1%
- 8am–11am479 flights87.4%
- 11am–2pm654 flights79.1%
- 2pm–5pm506 flights67.7%
- 5pm–8pm518 flights69.2%
- 8pm–5am319 flights62.0%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.0% on time, against 95.1% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 654 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MCO to AUS 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 MCO to AUS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 62.0%, a wide gap of 33.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.1%
- 8–11am87.4%
- 11am–2pm79.1%
- 2–5pm67.7%
- 5–8pm69.2%
- 8pm–5am62.0%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 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.
July is the worst month at 71.0% on time, 13 points below November, the best at 84.1%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 294 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.7%, a spread of 15 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 47,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 47,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 46,834 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 95.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.16% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 994 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 72.5% on time across 2,848 flights, 4 points below 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,848 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 AUS 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. November runs 84.1% on time and July 71.0%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,808 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to AUS questions
How often is MCO to AUS delayed?
Roughly 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 23.1% of the 2,848 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 MCO to AUS?
Delta Air Lines leads at 78.4% on time across 598 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 76.0%, a gap of 2 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 MCO to AUS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.0%, 33 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 July delays on MCO to AUS?
July is the weakest month at 71.0% on time, compared with 84.1% in November. Across the year that is 13 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
- AUS to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to AUS84.7%
- Delta Air Lines on MCO to AUS78.4%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to AUS76.0%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to AUS74.2%
- MCO to ATL, a related route74.9%
- DEN to AUS, a related route76.2%
- MCO to EWR, a related route75.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record84.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record78.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.0%
- 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. MCO to AUS and AUS 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.