Route reliability record
MCO→BUF
Orlando to Buffalo
- Flights
- 1,811
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,011 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,811 MCO to BUF flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 560 at 65.6% on time.
Best time to fly MCO to BUF: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.0%, against 66.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,776 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.55%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
JetBlue
65.6% on time across 560 flights
These figures cover 1,811 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 BUF
The two carriers here are closely matched: half 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 302 | 71.5% | 66 min | 0.99% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 560 | 65.6% | 75 min | 2.68% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 949 | 65.3% | 52 min | 1.05% | C |
No carrier stands out. JetBlue tops the table at 65.6%, half 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 BUF
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Orlando to Buffalo
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 → BUFOrlando to Buffalo | Southwest Airlines | 64.6% | 65.3% | 1.05% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. MCO → BUFOrlando to Buffalo | JetBlue Airways | 63.8% | 65.6% | 2.68% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 1586 16:05 |
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 43 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am187 flights92.3%
- 8am–11am344 flights81.4%
- 11am–2pm217 flights61.5%
- 2pm–5pm385 flights68.1%
- 5pm–8pm406 flights54.8%
- 8pm–5am272 flights48.9%
Scale runs 40% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 48.9% on time, against 92.3% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 406 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MCO to BUF 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 BUF, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 48.9%, a wide gap of 43.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.3%
- 8–11am81.4%
- 11am–2pm61.5%
- 2–5pm68.1%
- 5–8pm54.8%
- 8pm–5am48.9%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
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.
July is the worst month at 56.4% on time, 25 points below September, the best at 81.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 184 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.1%, a spread of 25 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 36,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 36,387 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 92.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.55% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.39%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
12.2% 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.
The 1,011 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.4% on time across 1,813 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,811 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 BUF 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 81.4% on time and July 56.4%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,776 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCO to BUF questions
How often is MCO to BUF delayed?
About 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 33.6% of the 1,811 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to BUF?
JetBlue Airways leads at 65.6% on time across 560 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 65.3%, a gap of half 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 BUF?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 48.9%, 43 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 BUF?
July is the weakest month at 56.4% on time, compared with 81.4% in September. 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
- BUF to MCO — the return legseparate record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to BUF71.5%
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to BUF65.6%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to BUF65.3%
- MCO to ATL, a related route74.9%
- ORD to BUF, a related route70.4%
- MCO to EWR, a related route75.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record71.5%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record65.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record65.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MCO to BUF and BUF 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.