Carrier route record

WNMCO→CLE

Southwest Airlines · Orlando to Cleveland

Flights: 310
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 15%
Carriers: 4

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

Southwest on MCO to CLE 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 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 310 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 561 at 86.5% on time.

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

On time

76.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 307 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.97%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.9%

Every carrier on MCO to CLE, 2,066 flights

These figures cover 310 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on MCO to CLE

Southwest flew 310 of the 2,066 flights on MCO to CLE, about 15% of it. Its 76.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 86.5% to Spirit at 50.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 86.5% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 74.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,189 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MCO to CLE
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	561	86.5%	70 min	0.53%	A+
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	310	76.5%	50 min	0.97%	B+
Frontier Airlines	1,189	74.3%	78 min	1.09%	C
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	6	50.0%	90 min	0.00%	F+

The spread between United and Frontier is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 19 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am5 flights—
8am–11am61 flights88.5%
11am–2pm36 flights72.2%
2pm–5pm171 flights74.6%
5pm–8pm33 flights69.7%
8pm–5am4 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.5% of the time, against 69.7% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 171 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on MCO to CLE through the year

Jul–Sep 202531 flights64.5%
Oct–Dec 202598 flights73.2%
Jan–Mar 202677 flights77.6%
Apr–Jun 2026104 flights82.5%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 76.5% on time across 310 flights.

Southwest on MCO to CLE did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 82.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 64.5%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 78 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 82.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.4%. 26 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 3,569 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
46%
Carrier
26%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
7%
Security
1%

46% 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 3,569 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 3,569 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.5% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 0.97% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.5% 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 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 895 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 77.2% on time across 310 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 310 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 CLE

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 310 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 76.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 307 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