Route reliability record
MCO→BHM
Orlando to Birmingham
- Flights
- 861
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 479 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 861 MCO to BHM flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly MCO to BHM: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.9%, against 70.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 70 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 852 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.81%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
70.3% on time across 861 flights
These figures cover 861 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% 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 BHM
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 861 | 70.3% | 60 min | 0.81% | C+ |
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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 35 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am339 flights87.6%
- 11am–2pm42 flights82.9%
- 2pm–5pm115 flights68.5%
- 5pm–8pm178 flights53.9%
- 8pm–5am187 flights52.7%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.7% on time, against 87.6% 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 339 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MCO to BHM 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 BHM, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 87.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 52.7%, a wide gap of 34.9 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am87.6%
- 11am–2pm82.9%
- 2–5pm68.5%
- 5–8pm53.9%
- 8pm–5am52.7%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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.
August is the worst month at 57.4% on time, 37 points below September, the best at 94.7%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 63.4%, a spread of 22 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 to one. The split is drawn from 15,198 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 87.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.81%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.0% 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 479 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 79.2% on time across 859 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 861 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BHM after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 861 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 70.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 852 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to BHM questions
How often is MCO to BHM delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.7% of the 861 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MCO to BHM compared with the rest of the country?
70.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCO to BHM?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 87.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 52.7%, 35 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 August delays on MCO to BHM?
August is the weakest month at 57.4% on time, compared with 94.7% in September. Across the year that is 37 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
- BHM to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- MCO to ATL, a related route74.9%
- ATL to BHM, a related route83.1%
- MCO to EWR, a related route75.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record70.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MCO to BHM and BHM 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.