Carrier route record
WNMCO→BUF
Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Buffalo
- Flights
- 949
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 52%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on MCO to BUF draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 949 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on MCO to BUF runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 120 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 934 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.05%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.4%
Every carrier on MCO to BUF, 1,811 flights
These figures cover 949 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on MCO to BUF
Southwest flew 949 of the 1,811 flights on MCO to BUF, most of the route. Its 65.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 66.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 71.5% to Southwest at 65.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 302 | 71.5% | 66 min | 0.99% | C+ |
| JetBlue Airways | 560 | 65.6% | 75 min | 2.68% | C |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 949 | 65.3% | 52 min | 1.05% | C |
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Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 51 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am86 flights95.3%
- 8am–11am267 flights83.0%
- 11am–2pm91 flights61.1%
- 2pm–5pm171 flights59.3%
- 5pm–8pm127 flights52.0%
- 8pm–5am207 flights44.6%
Scale runs 35% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 44.6% on time, against 95.3% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 267 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on MCO to BUF through the year
February is the weak month at 54.2% on time, against 83.1% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 99 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.5%, a spread of 30 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on MCO to BUF runs when it is late
The 324 late arrivals split 129 under half an hour, 99 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 96 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early107 flights11.5%
- Within 15 min503 flights53.9%
- 15–29 min late129 flights13.8%
- 30–59 min late99 flights10.6%
- 1–2 hours late73 flights7.8%
- 2+ hours late23 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 934 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
68 of 335 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. In the other direction, 57 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at BUF.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on MCO to BUF
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 September 2025, 5 hours 38 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 September 2025 | 5 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 February 2026 | 3 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 April 2026 | 3 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 March 2026 | 3 hours 23 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 May 2026 | 3 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 to one. The split is drawn from 16,760 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 95.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.05% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.53%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
10.3% 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 75.0% on time across 948 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 949 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.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on MCO to BUF
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 949 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 65.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 934 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to BUF, every carrier
- Southwest on BUF to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to BUF71.5%
- JetBlue Airways on MCO to BUF65.6%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.