Route reliability record

MCO→AUS

Orlando to Austin

Flights: 2,792
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 994 mi
Carriers: 4

This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,792 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 547 at 81.1% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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.

On time

76.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,754 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.15%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Delta

81.1% on time across 547 flights

These figures cover 2,792 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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

Which airline is most reliable on MCO to AUS

The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to AUS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	171	82.0%	49 min	2.34%	B
Delta Air Lines	547	81.1%	115 min	1.46%	B
Southwest Airlines	1,885	75.4%	60 min	0.74%	B+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	189	72.1%	86 min	3.17%	C−

No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 81.1%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 34 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am395 flights94.6%
8am–11am469 flights87.1%
11am–2pm616 flights78.7%
2pm–5pm513 flights66.2%
5pm–8pm456 flights71.5%
8pm–5am343 flights60.5%

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.5% on time, against 94.6% 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 616 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 17 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.November best, July worst

July is the worst month at 67.5% on time, 17 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. June was the busiest month here, with 291 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.5%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 45,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
24%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
1%

37% 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 45,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 45,110 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 94.6% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.15% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

8.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route are the a little over an hour kind, 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. 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 72.9% on time across 2,792 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 2,792 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.

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 67.5%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,754 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

MCO to AUS questions

How often is MCO to AUS delayed?

About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.3% of the 2,792 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 81.1% on time across 547 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.4%, a gap of 6 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 94.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.5%, 34 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 67.5% on time, compared with 84.1% in November. Across the year that is 17 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

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.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures