Route reliability record
MCO→BDL
Orlando to Hartford
- Flights
- 1,890
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,050 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,890 MCO to BDL flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 1,011 at 73.6% on time.
Best time to fly MCO to BDL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 79.9%, against 72.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 49 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,849 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
73.6% on time across 1,011 flights
These figures cover 1,890 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 BDL
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 9 | 88.9% | 48 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,011 | 73.6% | 74 min | 1.98% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 647 | 72.3% | 53 min | 1.70% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 223 | 69.6% | 101 min | 2.24% | C |
No carrier stands out. JetBlue tops the table at 73.6%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on MCO to BDL
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando to Hartford
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 → BDLOrlando to Hartford | JetBlue Airways | 72.1% | 73.6% | 1.98% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 138 11:20 |
| 2. MCO → BDLOrlando to Hartford | Southwest Airlines | 71.1% | 72.3% | 1.70% | 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 42 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am181 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am469 flights83.1%
- 11am–2pm304 flights73.5%
- 2pm–5pm267 flights70.5%
- 5pm–8pm433 flights64.7%
- 8pm–5am236 flights52.0%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.0% on time, against 93.8% 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 469 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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 61.0% on time, 30 points below September, the best at 90.9%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 203 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.1%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 35,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 35,315 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 93.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.90% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.7% 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.
The 1,050 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 runs 74.3% on time across 1,892 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,890 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 BDL 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. September runs 90.9% on time and July 61.0%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,849 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to BDL questions
How often is MCO to BDL 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 27.3% of the 1,890 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 BDL?
JetBlue Airways leads at 73.6% on time across 1,011 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 72.3%, a gap of about a point. 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 BDL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 52.0%, 42 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 BDL?
July is the weakest month at 61.0% on time, compared with 90.9% in September. Across the year that is 30 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
- BDL to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to BDL73.6%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to BDL72.3%
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to BDL69.6%
- MCO to ATL, a related route75.6%
- ORD to BDL, a related route75.4%
- MCO to EWR, a related route73.8%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record88.9%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record73.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record72.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. MCO to BDL and BDL 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.