Route reliability record
MCO→BUF
Orlando to Buffalo
- Flights
- 1,771
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,011 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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, 10 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,771 MCO to BUF flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 533 at 67.2% on time.
Best time to fly MCO to BUF: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.8%, against 68.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 95 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,744 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
67.2% on time across 533 flights
These figures cover 1,771 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% 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 BUF
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 288 | 76.1% | 69 min | 1.39% | B |
| JetBlue Airways | 533 | 67.2% | 70 min | 1.50% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 950 | 66.2% | 51 min | 0.95% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. JetBlue tops the table at 67.2%, 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 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.
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 | JetBlue Airways | 66.2% | 67.2% | 1.50% | 8am–11am, Wed | B6 1586 14:59 |
| 2. MCO → BUFOrlando to Buffalo | Southwest Airlines | 65.6% | 66.2% | 0.95% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am163 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am387 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm202 flights60.3%
- 2pm–5pm420 flights67.0%
- 5pm–8pm333 flights60.1%
- 8pm–5am266 flights50.6%
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.6% on time, against 93.2% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 420 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 81.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 184 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.9%. 23 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 33,000 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 33,000 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 32,966 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 93.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.34%.
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. 11.1% 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 1,011 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. 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 76.2% on time across 1,773 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,771 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 March 60.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,744 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 31.9% of the 1,771 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCO to BUF?
JetBlue Airways leads at 67.2% on time across 533 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 66.2%, 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 BUF?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 50.6%, 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 March delays on MCO to BUF?
March is the weakest month at 60.6% on time, compared with 81.4% in September. Across the year that is 21 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 BUF76.1%
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to BUF67.2%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to BUF66.2%
- MCO to ATL, a related route75.6%
- ORD to BUF, a related route70.6%
- MCO to EWR, a related route73.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record76.1%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record67.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record66.2%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.