Route reliability record
MCO→BQN
Orlando to Aguadilla
- Flights
- 995
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,129 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 995 MCO to BQN flights, of which Frontier Airlines flew 431 at 78.0% on time.
Best time to fly MCO to BQN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.9%, against 73.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 41 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 975 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Frontier
78.0% on time across 431 flights
These figures cover 995 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 BQN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 78.0% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 70.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 564 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines | 431 | 78.0% | 68 min | 1.62% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 564 | 70.1% | 72 min | 1.42% | C |
Frontier leads JetBlue by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on MCO to BQN
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 Aguadilla
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 → BQNOrlando to Aguadilla | Frontier Airlines | 76.7% | 78.0% | 1.62% | 8am–11am, Wed | F9 1954 23:12 |
| 2. MCO → BQNOrlando to Aguadilla | JetBlue Airways | 69.1% | 70.1% | 1.42% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 430 05:01 |
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 55 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am121 flights90.0%
- 8am–11am67 flights88.1%
- 11am–2pm116 flights71.7%
- 2pm–5pm132 flights63.6%
- 5pm–8pm35 flights35.3%
- 8pm–5am524 flights73.2%
Scale runs 25% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 35.3% on time, against 90.0% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 524 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 61.5% on time, 25 points below May, the best at 86.2%. 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 121 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.5%. 17 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 42% of the 18,000 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 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 18,237 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 6,990 of the 18,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.51% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.50%.
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. 10.5% 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 1,129 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 78.6% on time across 996 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 995 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 BQN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 995 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 73.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 975 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to BQN questions
How often is MCO to BQN delayed?
About 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 26.5% of the 995 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 BQN?
Frontier Airlines leads at 78.0% on time across 431 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 70.1%, 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 BQN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 35.3%, 55 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 BQN?
August is the weakest month at 61.5% on time, compared with 86.2% in May. Across the year that is 25 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
- BQN to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to BQN78.0%
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to BQN70.1%
- MCO to ATL, a related route75.6%
- MCO to EWR, a related route73.8%
- MCO to ORD, a related route70.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record78.0%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record70.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MCO to BQN and BQN 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.