Route reliability record
MCO→BOS
Orlando to Boston
- Flights
- 4,646
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 1,121 mi
- Carriers
- 6
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 77.4%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,646 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,257 at 75.1% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.1% on time across 1,257 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,513 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.82%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Delta
75.1% on time across 1,257 flights
These figures cover 4,646 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% 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 BOS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 75.1% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 67.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,490 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 136 | 90.4% | 68 min | 0.74% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,257 | 75.1% | 72 min | 2.07% | B |
| Spirit Airlines | 581 | 69.3% | 61 min | 3.44% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 2,490 | 67.4% | 77 min | 3.09% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 179 | 64.5% | 70 min | 3.91% | D− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 3.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 39 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,056 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am659 flights80.3%
- 11am–2pm1,004 flights69.7%
- 2pm–5pm662 flights56.7%
- 5pm–8pm699 flights56.2%
- 8pm–5am566 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 91.7% 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 60.4% on time, 23 points below May, the best at 83.4%. 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.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 73.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.3%. 8 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 98,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 98,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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.
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 33,000 minutes out of 98,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.82%, against 1.80% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 12.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% 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 1,121 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 70.0% on time across 4,644 flights, within half a point 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 4,646 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 delay figures matter less here than the 2.82% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic.
Common questions
MCO to BOS questions
How often is MCO to BOS delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrive 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 4,646 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to BOS?
Delta Air Lines leads at 75.1% on time across 1,257 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 67.4%, a gap of 8 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 BOS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 52.7%, 39 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 BOS?
July is the weakest month at 60.4% on time, compared with 83.4% in May. Across the year that is 23 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
- BOS to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record90.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record75.1%
- 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 BOS and BOS 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, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.