Carrier route record

WNMCO→BWI

Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Baltimore

Flights: 3,584
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 76%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on MCO to BWI lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,584 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 538 at 76.5% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on MCO to BWI from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

76.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,510 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.84%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.4%

Every carrier on MCO to BWI, 4,711 flights

These figures cover 3,584 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on MCO to BWI

Southwest flew 3,584 of the 4,711 flights on MCO to BWI, most of the route. Its 76.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 76.8% to Spirit at 65.9%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 76.5% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 65.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 589 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to BWI
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)	3,584	76.8%	59 min	1.84%	B
Frontier Airlines	538	76.5%	77 min	1.67%	B
Spirit Airlines	589	65.9%	62 min	3.23%	C−

Spirit Airlines cancels 3.2% 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

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 36 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am499 flights95.9%
8am–11am858 flights87.7%
11am–2pm456 flights75.9%
2pm–5pm532 flights73.4%
5pm–8pm758 flights65.1%
8pm–5am481 flights59.8%

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.8% on time, against 95.9% 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 858 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on MCO to BWI through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, August worst

August is the worst month at 66.7% on time, 25 points below September, the best at 91.5%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 329 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.8%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

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 48,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
39%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
23%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
1%

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 48,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 48,061 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 95.9% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.84% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 787 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 76.9% on time across 3,581 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 3,584 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 Southwest on MCO to BWI

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 91.5% on time and August 66.7%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 3,510 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures